WIFE IN TAX FRAUD CAUSE WILL BEGIN 15 YEAR SENTENCE ON MARCH 3

A Cedar Hill husband and wife who ran a tax preparation business will each spend 15 years in federal prison for a series of frauds they concocted, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Jacqueline and Gladstone Morrison were sentenced Friday in Fort Worth by U.S. District Judge John McBryde.
The sentence of 187 months, although steep for a tax preparation fraud case, was below the sentencing guidelines in the case that ranged from 262 months to 327 months.
McBryde also ordered them to pay nearly $18 million in restitution.
The couple operated Jacqueline Morrison & Associates on North Collins in Arlington and on James Street in Fort Worth. The business was opened in 2005 and continued until a federal search warrant shut it down in 2010.
The Morrisons were charged with 17 counts alleging tax evasion and fraud. They were convicted at trial in October 2014.
Gladstone Morrison, 43, has been in custody since the conviction. He’s a former standout in the high jump at the University of Texas at Arlington.
McBryde found him to be a flight risk because he was born and raised in Jamaica and still has a lot of family there, court records show. He became a U.S. citizen in 2010. He has said his UTA track scholarship was what brought him to the U.S.
Court evidence also showed he has traveled extensively in the past seven years, to Jamaica as well as: Frankfurt, Germany; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Panama; Marseille, France; Tel Aviv, Israel; San Domenico, Dominican Republic; Beijing, China; San Jose, Costa Rica; and Los Cabos, Mexico.
McBryde ordered Jacqueline Morrison, 37, to begin serving her sentence on March 13.
Neither of them had a prior criminal record, records show.
The couple married in 2004. Jacqueline Morrison is a certified public accountant and internal auditor who is the only one of her family to attend college.
Her attorney, Peter Fleury, called the proposed punishment “draconian” and asked for leniency. He said money stolen from the government in the scheme went to the taxpayers, most of whom weren’t required to return any of it.
“That is a tremendously disproportionate disparity in sentencing,” he said.
Acting U.S. Attorney John Parker, of the Northern District of Texas, defended the way the case was handled.
“The aggressive prosecution of these individuals is vital to maintaining public confidence in our tax system,” Parker said in a statement.
R. Damon Rowe, the agent in charge of the IRS’ criminal investigation office in Dallas, said most CPAs try to achieve the highest ethical standards while Jacqueline Morrison did not.
“She and her husband, Gladstone, abused the trust their clients placed in them and their company,” he said in a statement. “The Morrisons are now being held accountable for their corrupt actions.”
The Morrisons increased their clients’ tax refunds by claiming fictitious business losses on their income tax returns, prosecutors said. In return, they charged higher fees for the additional paperwork. They earned more than $2 million in fees during the scheme, prosecutors said.
The Morrisons had their clients sign forms that tried to place all responsibility for any false information on the clients, according to prosecutors.
The larger refunds allowed the couple to increase their business through positive word of mouth, prosecutors said.
They used their large client list to win a $750,000 franchise agreement with Express Tax Services, a subsidiary of H&R Block.
But after signing that agreement, the IRS stripped the couple of their electronic tax preparation authority due to the fraud investigation.
To hide that fact, the Morrisons gave Express Tax Services the electronic filing identification number of a business associate, according to prosecutors.
The Morrisons then secretly entered into a separate agreement to sell JMA to an individual. Gladstone Morrison tried to hide that from Express Tax by telling the company that the person was their office manager.
The Morrisons received separate payments from both Express Tax and the individual, who was not named in court documents, due to their parallel agreements, prosecutors said.
When those agreements fell apart, the couple tried to sell JMA to RealTex Ventures LLC for $425,000. The Morrisons lied again when they told the company they were not under investigation.