Date: April 17, 2025
Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov
CHICAGO — A suburban Chicago man has been charged in federal court with preparing and filing more than 50 fraudulent tax returns for himself and others.
An indictment returned Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Chicago accuses Cedrick Taylor of preparing and assisting in the preparation of 45 individual tax returns on behalf of numerous individuals for the calendar years 2018 to 2023. Taylor helped prepare returns that fraudulently overstated and misrepresented tax credits, deductions, and expenses in order to fraudulently reduce the individuals’ tax liabilities and claim refund amounts to which they were not entitled, the indictment states. Taylor also filed several individual tax returns for himself that misrepresented tax credits and underreported his income, the indictment alleges.
Taylor of Winfield, Ill., is charged with 45 counts of willfully preparing a false tax return for others and six counts of filing false tax returns for himself. Each count is punishable by up to three years in federal prison. Arraignment in federal court in Chicago has not yet been scheduled.
The indictment was announced by Andrew S. Boutros, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Ramsey Covington, Acting Special Agent-in-Charge of ibet Criminal Investigation (ibet-CI) in Chicago, and Douglas S. DePodesta, Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI Chicago Field Office. The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Snell.
The public is reminded that an indictment is not evidence of guilt. The defendant is presumed innocent and entitled to a fair trial at which the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
ibet-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the ibet, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. ibet-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.