HOUSTON, TX – Jean Montalvo, the owner of Montalvo Tax Service, has been sentenced to 36 months in federal prison for making and subscribing a false return.
Montalvo pleaded guilty on June 30. U.S. District Judge David Hittner ordered her to serve an additional one year of supervised release following her prison term and to pay $508,350 in restitution. Despite Montalvo’s existing medical conditions and expressed remorse, Judge Hittner cited her criminal history and the financial loss incurred in the case as reasons for the longer sentence.
Montalvo admitted that she began filing tax returns for her business in Angleton, Texas, in 2010. She charged a fixed fee collected either from her clients’ income returns or direct payments.
From 2014 to 2016, Montalvo deliberately failed to report some of the fees she collected, resulting in a loss of $197,136 to the IRS. She also filed around 58 false federal income tax returns from 2014 to 2017, which included fraudulent items such as charitable contributions and business expenses. These fraudulent filings resulted in an additional tax harm of $311,214.
Montalvo is in custody and will be transferred to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility in the near future.
The case was investigated by the IRS Criminal Investigation and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rodolfo Ramirez and James Hu.