Tax preparer faces felony charges for illegally inflating clients’ refunds

BATON ROUGE – A St. Mary Parish tax preparer is charged with multiple felonies in connection with a tax fraud scheme that cost Louisiana taxpayers an estimated $55,000.

Lakesha Navy (Booking Photo), of Baldwin, allegedly filed hundreds of state income tax returns containing fabricated business losses that improperly reduced her clients’ taxable income, leading in many cases to illegally inflated tax refunds.

Tax auditors with the Louisiana Department of Revenue noticed a suspicious pattern with returns that Navy filed in 2014 and 2015. Investigators who interviewed her clients determined that many of them did not claim any business losses when they provided Navy with their tax records, and that some did not own businesses at all. The clients interviewed claimed no knowledge of the suspected illegal activity.

Navy was booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on Thursday, February 2 on charges of Principal to Filing or Maintaining False Public Records and Principal to Illegal Transmission of Monetary Funds. She is the 64^th person arrested under a joint anti-fraud initiative of the Department of Revenue and the state Attorney General’s office.