SAN FRANCISCO - Alena Aleykina, former special agent for the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Division, was convicted on June 15 after a jury in Sacramento, Calif., found her guilty of filing false tax returns, obstruction of justice, and stealing government money, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Alex G. Tse and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard E. Zuckerman of the Justice Department’s Tax Division. The verdict followed a two-week trial in the district court in the Eastern District of California before the Honorable John A. Mendez, U.S. District Judge.
According to court documents and evidence introduced at trial, Aleykina, of Sacramento, is a Certified Public Accountant and holds a master’s degree in business administration. She filed six false tax returns: three personal tax returns for years 2009, 2010, and 2011 and three in the names of trusts she created for years 2010 and 2011. On her personal tax returns, Aleykina fraudulently claimed the head of household filing status, false dependents, and deductions for education expenses to which she was not entitled. She also falsely claimed on a trust tax return to be paying wages to her mother and her sister to care for her son and for her father.
Additionally, Aleykina stole government funds and obstructed justice during the investigation. She stole from the IRS’s Tuition Assistance Program by falsely claiming $4,000 in tuition reimbursement for classes that she did not take. When criminal investigators approached Aleykina to retrieve her government laptop, Aleykina lied to the agents about the location of the laptop and began deleting files from the computer after the agents left. The total loss to the government from Aleykina’s conduct is more than $60,000.
Sentencing has been scheduled for Sept. 25, 2018, before Judge Mendez. Aleykina faces a maximum statutory penalty of three years in prison for each false tax return count, 10 years in prison for theft of government funds, and 20 years in prison for obstruction of justice. In addition, the court may order Aleykina to serve an additional period of supervised release, and pay restitution and monetary penalties. However, any sentence following conviction will be imposed by the court only after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney William Frentzen and Tax Division Trial Attorneys Arthur Ewenczyk. The United States Attorney’s Office in San Francisco, California, is prosecuting this case with the Tax Division; the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Califonia is recused from this matter.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
