Nevada CPA Pleads Guilty to Filing False Tax Returns

A Nevada CPA pleaded guilty in early October to aiding and assisting the filing of false tax returns for his role in a purported investment scheme to sell false tax deductions. He is scheduled to be sentenced in January 2024.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Lance K. Bradford of Henderson, was a Certified Public Accountant and founder and manager of an accounting firm, LL Bradford & Company (LLB). LLB provided accounting services including tax preparation, audit and consulting services. Bradford also operated a real estate business that developed office buildings and other real property. In connection with Bradford’s real estate development activities, he operated and controlled a real estate investment partnership entity.

In 2011, Bradford began offering LLB’s high-net-worth clients an “investment opportunity” through which the clients would make a payment to his partnership entity and, in exchange, receive a large tax deduction of approximately five to seven times the amount of money the client “invested.” Bradford advised that the clients’ payments would entitle them to claim the large tax deduction based on losses derived from the partnership entity even though the tax laws did not permit the sale of such deductions in exchange for an investment or money and the partnership did not incur the losses or depreciation in the amounts Bradford was selling. Bradford also did not report the purported investments as losses on the clients’ tax returns as promised. Instead, he caused the clients’ returns to report large false deductions for cost of goods sold, professional and consulting fees or nonpassive losses. In total, Bradford’s scheme caused a tax loss to the IRS of at least $8 million.