St. Louis county tax preparer who falsified tax returns sentenced

Date: July 22, 2025

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

ST. LOUIS — U.S. District Judge Audrey G. Fleissig on Tuesday sentenced a St. Louis County tax preparer to five years of probation for falsifying federal income tax returns for clients.

Judge Fleissig also ordered Elisa Y. Brown to pay $156,559.98 in restitution.

Brown admitted preparing false tax returns from 2016-2020. Brown prepared the returns from her home in exchange for between $150 and $250 per return. She did not have a Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN), which is issued by the IRS and required on returns prepared for compensation. Brown digitally signed each tax return in the name of the taxpayer, making it appear to the IRS that the taxpayer had prepared the return.

Brown “made up businesses out of thin air and claimed tens of thousands of dollars in false business expenses, false medical and dental expenses, and false cash donations, all for the purpose of inflating the refunds her clients would receive from the IRS, often by thousands of dollars per return,” a sentencing memo filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Clow says.

Brown admitted filing false tax returns for 11 clients from 2016-2020. During the same time, she prepared and submitted a total of 560 tax returns, many of which contained similar false deductible expenses.

Brown pleaded guilty in April to two counts of assisting in the preparation of a false tax return.

The case was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Clow prosecuted the case.

IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) is the law enforcement arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-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 19 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.