Over five years, Jose Alfredo Fernandez made nearly $5 million by defrauding taxpayers, banks, clients of his businesses and others, he admitted Tuesday in federal court. And he will soon be paying for that with at least two and as many as six years of his life in prison, according to terms of a plea deal reached with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta.
Fernandez, 36, was running a tax return preparation business in Miami-Dade County in 2016 when several clients complained to the NBC6 Investigators that he had inflated their refunds and then kept their money.
That’s just some of what federal authorities uncovered after NBC6 last year reported businesses connected to him had obtained $1.2 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans over 24 days in 2020 – and then used $410,000 cash to buy a vacation rental home near Walt Disney World in the name of one of those companies.
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As part of his plea, that six-bedroom, six-bath home will be turned over to the federal government, along with about $35,000 held in bank accounts in his name.
In all, the feds found Fernandez collected $1.7 million in fraudulent PPP loans, cashed over $900,000 in fake checks and obtained more than $2 million in fraudulent tax refunds from 2016 to 2019, in part by stealing the identities of clients of his tax preparation business.
As part of his guilty plea to wire fraud, bank fraud and aggravated identity theft, he will be sentenced to a two-year minimum mandatory prison term for the last of those crimes. In addition, sentencing guidelines call for at least four more years consecutive to that term, though the judge could deviate from that at his June 29 sentencing.
The government is no longer seeking forfeiture of four cars, including a Mercedes-Benz S550 and a 2020 Tesla Model X, and $277,000 held in bank accounts in the names of his wife and a co-conspirator connected to a Miami convenience store company.
