Mexican man sentenced after being found guilty of impersonating IRS agent, feds say

A Mexican man was sentenced Wednesday to four years in federal prison after he was convicted of multiple crimes related to a scheme he ran while falsely identifying himself as an Internal Revenue Service agent.

Francisco Ivan Velazquez was convicted at trial of three counts of wire fraud, one count of aiding the presentation of a false tax return, and two counts of impersonating an IRS officer, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

The government said Velazquez told over a dozen victims that he could get hundreds of thousands of dollars for them from a fictitious IRS program.

“The defendant pretended to be an IRS agent and preyed on victims — many of whom were non-native English speakers — who struggled to pay their home mortgages,” said Sigal Chattah, first assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Nevada, in the release. “He exploited his victims’ financial vulnerabilities and stole hard-earned money.”

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Velazquez told his victims that funds were available from a purported IRS program that allowed people who had lost a home to foreclosure to recoup money by filing certain documents, the DOJ said.

Velazquez’s criminal scheme sought at least $1.8 million from the IRS, the government said. In addition to the prison term, Velazquez was ordered to pay nearly $200,000 in restitution to his victims.