Anita Marie Rodriguez Perez, a 51-year-old resident of Sellersburg, Indiana, has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for her role in preparing and submitting more than 460 false tax returns. The sentencing also includes two years of supervised release and an order to pay $1,954,673.30 in restitution.
Court documents show that between 2021 and 2023, Rodriguez Perez operated ChuliTodo, a tax preparation business based in Clark County, Indiana. During this period, she submitted fraudulent tax returns on behalf of clients to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). These returns included fabricated Schedule C forms that falsely claimed clients operated businesses with significant net losses. Investigators found that none of these taxpayers had actually run such businesses during the relevant tax periods.
Many of the false returns also reported inflated itemized deductions under Schedule A, especially for medical and dental expenses. As a result of these actions, clients received refunds much larger than they were entitled to receive. Authorities estimate that from tax years 2020 through 2022, Rodriguez Perez filed approximately 463 fraudulent returns leading to a total tax loss of $1,575,250.
“Tax fraud undermines the integrity of our financial system and unfairly shifts the burden onto honest taxpayers,” said Tom Wheeler, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana. “When tax preparers exploit their expertise to deceive the government, they not only violate the law—they betray the trust of their clients. These cases are complex and time-consuming to investigate, and the efforts of IRS-CI send a clear message: accountability applies to everyone.”
The case was investigated by Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), and U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker imposed the sentence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew B. Miller prosecuted the case.
