A local St. Louis tax preparer has been hit with sentencing after being caught in a scheme of fraudulent tax returns, the Justice Department reports. Shasherese M. Reed, 53, received five years of probation yesterday and is on the hook for $230,000 in restitution, after she managed to defraud the Internal Revenue Service out of at least $312,192 by preparing at least 41 false tax returns for 13 taxpayers, according to an official statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office .

Reed submitted tax returns with fake businesses, made-up expenses, and false claims for medical and dental costs to get large refunds. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Clow described her actions in a memo, stating that Reed "made up businesses out of thin air and claimed tens of thousands of dollars in false business expenses, false medical and dental expenses, mortgage interest, state and local taxes, and deductible employee expenses, all for the purpose of inflating the refunds her clients would receive from the IRS, often by thousands of dollars per return," as stated in a press release . To avoid detection after past IRS scrutiny, Reed submitted the false tax returns using her daughter’s tax preparation business, Majac Money. Her own Preparer Tax Identification Number had been revoked in 2015 after her business, Sha-Sha Taxes, was flagged for filing false returns.

Reed's fraud was revealed during an undercover operation when she filed a false tax return for an IRS agent, claiming $26,242 in fake business expenses without checking if the agent even had a business. She pleaded guilty in February to helping prepare false tax returns. Between 2017 and 2021, she made about $378,026 by charging high fees for her services.

Despite previous legal action, Reed continued her unlawful activities following an initial IRS probe but she intensified her efforts according to a sentencing memorandum from Assistant U.S. Attorney Clow which says "(R)ather than be deterred by the previous IRS investigation, Defendant doubled down on her illegal acts," as reported by the U.S. Attorney’s Office . the The IRS Criminal Investigation team spearheaded the investigative charge against Reed leading ultimately to her prosecution, which was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Clow, as the Justice Department documented in its report of the proceedings.