A South Barrington bean counter is on the hook for cooking the books, with a guilty plea in a multimillion-dollar tax dodging scheme, feds announced. Imran Mahmood, 56, a certified public accountant, dropped a courtroom bombshell this Thursday pleading guilty to tax evasion, admitting to swindling Uncle Sam and Illinois out of a hefty $3.4 million.
Caught red-handed, Mahmood's scheme involved padding his wallets with over $9 million filched from the coffers of an Illinois nonprofit and a related company between 2011 and 2014 and orchestrating a clandestine jig to keep the IRS and tax authorities in the dark, according to the information provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.
But Mahmood’s luck ran out when the taxman knocked on his door, with Acting U.S. Attorney Morris Pasqual and IRS honcho Justin Campbell leading the charge, backed up by the boys at the FBI's Chicago Field Office, ready to make an example out of him, the plea unsealed in the court laid it all bare. Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick J. King, Jr. is spilling the tea in the courtroom, painting a damning picture of Mahmood's sleight of hand.
Mahmood played dumb with his own tax pro – a move that’s now landed him in hot water – by putting a lid on the full sum he pocketed and the entity he used to stash the illicit funds; this stunt resulted in a string of fraudulent tax returns from 2011 to 2014 – a dance with deceit that finally reached its final number, according to what the guilty plea put on the record. The tax evasion hustle has set Mahmood on a one-way trip to a possible five-year residency at a federal lockup, with Judge Sara L. Ellis penciling his fate in the docket for June 11, 2024, 10:30 a.m.
As the court documents sing, Mahmood’s elaborate ruse has not only bruised the balance sheets to the tune of more than $3 million but also served up a cautionary tale for any others who might fiddle with their financial fates – no matter how clever, the house always wins.
