Fed Judge Sentences Napa Doctor To Year In Prison For Tax Fraud
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- A federal judge in San Francisco sentenced a doctor from Napa to a year and a day in prison Friday for defrauding the IRS out of more than $100,000, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer imposed the sentence on Ali Vaziri, fined him $10,000 and ordered him to pay $116,703 in restitution to the IRS for tax fraud, according to U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag.
Vaziri, 49, a doctor of internal medicine in Napa, was indicted on tax fraud charges by a federal grand jury in 2012, Haag said.
He pleaded guilty on Feb. 3 to four felony counts of willfully filing false IRS tax returns from 2005 to 2008.
In 2005, Vaziri falsely inflated his business expenses, causing the IRS to lose $14,535 in taxes and then repeated the fraud for the next three years, underpaying $60,620 in 2006, $27,476 in 2007 and $14,072 in 2008, according to Haag.
The defendant later admitted to federal investigators that with added penalties and interest, he owed the IRS a total of $268,568.
Breyer also sentenced Vaziri to one year of supervised release, including six months in a residential reenter center.
Vaziri will begin serving his sentence in a federal prison on or before August 15, according to prosecutors.
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