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Tenafly Man Admits Filing 18 Phony Tax Returns to Obtain Tax Refunds

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Tenafly NJ, a Bergen County, New Jersey, man today admitted filing 18 fraudulent tax returns in victims’ names to obtain tax refunds to which he was not entitled, Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig announced.

Emmanuel A. Barrientos-Fermin, 33, of Tenafly, New Jersey, pleaded guilty by videoconference before U.S. District Judge Claire C. Cecchi to an indictment charging him with one count each of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, access device fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

Continue reading Tenafly Man Admits Filing 18 Phony Tax Returns to Obtain Tax Refunds

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New Law Increasing Refund Time for Approved Nonresidential Property Tax Appeals Will Lead Towns to Over-assess a Nonresidential Property

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, NJBIA Statement on Law Increasing Refund Time for Approved Nonresidential Property Tax Appeals

New Jersey Business & Industry Association Vice President of Government Affairs Andrew Musick issued the following statement regarding the signing of bill A-2004, which increases the time municipalities have to refund successful nonresidential property tax appeals from 60 days to three years.

Continue reading New Law Increasing Refund Time for Approved Nonresidential Property Tax Appeals Will Lead Towns to Over-assess a Nonresidential Property
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NJGOP Chairman Calls On Murphy To Return Shore Rental Tax Revenue

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the sstaff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Governor Murphy has announced that he will be eliminating the shore rental tax going forward. The Governor has admitted that the tax was an unnecessary burden and many people say that mom and pop rentals were inadvertently taxed.   The NJGOP has been repeatedly calling for the end of the shore rental tax .   

NJGOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt released the following statement:


“Governor Murphy has admitted he made a mistake, but now it’s time to rectify that mistake. He must refund the money to the mom and pops who were forced to pay his shore rental tax this summer. Otherwise, it’s safe to assume it was intentional, and another democratic money grab no different than when Murphy tried to steal $33M from the firemen’s burial and hardship fund. Here’s the Governor’s chance to put his money where his mouth is, or better yet, back in the wallets of the moms and pops he took it from.”

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NJ Division of Taxation : State income tax refunds will start being issued March 1st

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog 

Trenton NJ, according to Treasury Department spokeswoman Jennifer Sciortino  the schedule is the same as in the past few years and is consistent with what it done in dozens of other states.

New Jersey has a reputation of being very slow with the refunds .

Sciortino told NJ1015 , “Anti-fraud protections need to be revised every year because perpetrators of refund fraud change tactics frequently,” Marita Sciarrotta, the state Division of Taxation’s deputy director of taxpayer services, said the refunds begin in March primarily to ensure the state has the data it needs to validate tax returns.

“Although people can start filing their income tax returns at the very end of January, there are some filing requirements by their employers or their banking systems or their pension holders that are not required by law to be in place to a taxing jurisdiction until later in February,” said Sciarrotta.

“Given the last six years of identity theft and taxpayer refund fraud, it’s much more difficult for us to vet a taxpayer, their attendant information on a tax return and the validity of what they’re claiming,” she said. “And to ensure that it is the person that we are sending it to, rather than somebody getting a jump on their tax return, it’s better to wait until we have much more concrete data systemically that we can do our matches with.”

Taxpayers who file electronically will generally get their refunds around four weeks after the returns are filed, with some turned around faster than that but others taking a bit longer if they are more complex.

“An old-school paper filing, we recommend that somebody just kind of make a cup of tea and relax because it may take 12 weeks for those tax returns to be fully processed and fully vetted,” Sciarrotta said.

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Mail carrier from Ridgewood sentenced to home confinement in fraud scheme

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Mail carrier from Ridgewood sentenced to home confinement in fraud scheme

JANUARY 7, 2015, 6:13 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2015, 6:13 PM
BY STEPHANIE AKIN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD

A mail carrier from Ridgewood who accepted bribes to help members of a fraud ring steal more than $2 million in federal tax refunds was sentenced Wednesday to eight months of home confinement and three years of supervised release.

Lourdes Ortiz, 41, was among seven people charged in 2013 in connection with the scheme, which involved using fake identities to get tax refunds and then diverting the checks from postal routes. She was recruited by another mail carrier, Gloria Rivera, to intercept checks in Flushing, Queens, according to court documents. Rivera, of the Bronx, was also sentenced Wednesday.

Ortiz told U.S. Judge Faith S. Hochberg that she regretted her role in the scheme.

“I was just caught up in the moment, I guess,” she said in U.S. District Court in Newark.

Ortiz was granted a lighter sentence than the others charged because she was the lowest person in the conspiracy, Hochberg said from the bench. The sentence was also crafted to allow Ortiz to keep her job babysitting two children, Hochberg said.

The scheme, described in court documents as a classic type of fraud, started with co-conspirators who used fake security numbers and other personal information to file 1040 forms declaring fraudulent earnings and taxes withheld.

The co-conspirators, all of whom were not identified in court documents, bribed mail carriers, including Ortiz and Rivera, to get the resulting refund checks. The checks were eventually deposited in bank accounts controlled by people higher up in the conspiracy, and some of the money was used to buy cars and gamble at Atlantic City casinos.

The checks were cashed through bank accounts set up for newly-formed businesses incorporated by four of the other defendants in New Jersey and New York.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/mail-carrier-from-ridgewood-sentenced-to-home-confinement-in-fraud-scheme-1.1187526
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