{"id":1481919,"date":"2026-02-19T13:18:01","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T19:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1481919"},"modified":"2026-02-21T22:41:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T04:41:58","slug":"tax-foul-could-get-five-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1481919","title":{"rendered":"Guilty plea in tax fraud scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-817982\" src=\"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2019\/09\/US-Eastern-District-Court-of-Texas-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/>TYLER \u2013 A Longview tax preparer has pleaded guilty to a federal violation in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney Jay R. Combs. 57-year-old Marneitha Reese Scott, of Gilmer, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to aid, assist, counsel, or advise in tax fraud before U.S. Magistrate Judge K. Nicole Mitchell on February 18, 2026.<\/p>\n<p>According to information presented in court, Scott owned a tax return preparer business operated under the name of F.A.S.T. Financial Firm (&#8220;FAST&#8221;), with two locations in Longview.\u00a0 Scott and others recruited tax preparers to work at the businesses to prepare and file income tax returns for clients.<\/p>\n<p>With others, Scott created a scheme to defraud the United States by instructing the tax preparers to create fraudulent entries on client tax returns, including, for example, claims for business losses when the client had no business.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The tax returns were filed by Scott or employees working at her instruction.\u00a0 The tax preparation business was paid a fee by the clients for preparing and filing the returns.\u00a0 Scott&#8217;s conduct resulted in a known tax loss for tax years 2019 \u2013 2022 of $243,899.00.<\/p>\n<p>Scott faces up to five years in federal prison, a potential fine, and restitution at sentencing.\u00a0 Sentencing hearings will be scheduled after the completion of presentence investigations by the U.S. Probation Office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TYLER \u2013 A Longview tax preparer has pleaded guilty to a federal violation in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney Jay R. Combs. 57-year-old Marneitha Reese Scott, of Gilmer, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to aid, assist, counsel, or advise in tax fraud before U.S. Magistrate Judge K. Nicole Mitchell on February 18, 2026. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1481919\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Guilty plea in tax fraud scheme<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":1482201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2019\/09\/US-Eastern-District-Court-of-Texas-150x150.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1481919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 14:20:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2019\/09\/US-Eastern-District-Court-of-Texas-150x150.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1481919"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1482545,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481919\/revisions\/1482545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1482201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1481919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1481919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1481919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}