BIRMINGHAM – On Thursday, a federal judge sentenced a Demopolis woman to nearly four years in prison for filing more than $250,000 in false tax returns, announced U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, FBI Special Agent in Charge Roger C. Stanton and Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation, Special Agent in Charge Veronica Hyman-Pillot.
EUNICE F. PLUMMER, 36, pleaded guilty in October before U.S. District Judge L. Scott Coogler to three counts of attempting to evade or defeat a large portion of the income tax she owed for 2011, 2012 and 2013. She also pleaded guilty to eight counts of filing false tax returns for other people between 2011 and 2013. Judge Coogler sentenced her to three years and 10 months in prison and ordered her immediately into the custody of U.S. Marshals.
According to the indictment and her plea agreement with the government, Plummer operated a tax preparation business in Birmingham, called Plummer Tax Services, from 2010-2014. During that time, she routinely inflated the amount of tax refunds her customers would receive by using fraudulent information —including wage amounts, child and dependent care expenses, education credits and business losses – on tax returns. Plummer also substantially underreported her income from operating Plummer Tax Services. Between the taxes she failed to pay on her own behalf and the boosted refund amounts from the fraudulent tax returns she filed for clients, Plummer cheated the IRS out of more than $250,000.
In January and February this year, while Plummer was on bond awaiting sentencing following her guilty plea, she reactivated her tax business under a new name, Unique Tax Services, at the same location where she had operated Plummer Tax Services, and filed more tax returns that were fraudulent. Judge Coogler told Plummer at sentencing that by continuing to file fraudulent tax returns after pleading guilty to that conduct, she showed “disdain and disrespect” to the court and acted like “a thief” and “a con artist.”
The FBI and IRS-CI investigated the case, which Assistant U.S. Attorney Xavier O. Carter Sr. and Amanda Wick prosecuted.
