The owner of a Tennessee tax preparation business was sentenced to decades in prison after $80 million in pandemic relief funds were claimed under false pretenses, according to the Department of Justice.
The Department of Justice stated that Renata Walton, 45, of Mississippi, ran a tax preparation business in Moscow, Tennessee.
From March 2022 to August 2023, the DOJ alleges that Walton conspired with a former employee to file false tax returns for clients seeking fraudulent refunds based on the employee retention credit (ERC) and the paid sick and family leave credit, which were intended to assist struggling businesses during the pandemic.
Nicole Jones, also known as Nicole Dickerson, pled guilty in August 2025 for her role in this offense.
Furthermore, the Department of Justice stated that Walton and Jones willfully submitted false salaries on clients’ tax returns in order to falsely claim ERC and pay sick and family leave credits to which the customers were not entitled.
According to the DOJ, Walton also filed bogus applications with the Small Business Administration (SBA) for loans through the Payment Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program.
To back up her assertions, the DOJ stated that Walton filed fake tax forms to the SBA, and her clients obtained tax refunds in excess of $100,000. According to the DOJ, Walton and Jones received payments from these clients totaling nearly $15,000 per tax return.
The IRS got concerned and began contacting her clients to reclaim the unlawfully issued funds, but Walton impeded their attempts, according to a DOJ news release.
Walton provided her clients with fabricated information, claiming that the fictitious wages Walton and Jones claimed to the IRS were legal, the DOJ alleged.
The DOJ stated that Walton and Jones did not file a tax return in 2022. In other words, they did not report the ill-gotten wealth from these occurrences as genuine income.
Overall, Walton filed tax returns for approximately $80 million in pandemic relief funding and tax refunds that neither she nor her clients were entitled to receive. The DOJ stated that Jones was also responsible for an undisclosed fraction of these allegations.
The DOJ reported that these methods cost the US government more than $52 million.
Walton and Jones face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud, ten years in prison for each count of money laundering, three years in prison for each count of assisting in the preparation of a false tax return, and one year in prison for willful failure to file a return.
Walton faces up to 20 years in jail for obstructing justice.
A federal judge will make a sentence decision based on guidelines and other statutory circumstances. Jones is slated to be sentenced on June 9, while Walton is planned for June 19.
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