Wisconsin man charged with filing false tax returns

Date: Oct. 8, 2024

Contact: [email protected]

Gregory J. Haanstad, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, announced that on Oct. 8, 2024, a grand jury returned an indictment charging Vikram Naik with three counts of filing false individual income tax returns, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7206(1).

According to the indictment, Naik willfully made and subscribed, under penalties of perjury, individual income tax returns (Forms 1040) for the years 2017, 2018, and 2019. Naik had federal income tax withholding amounts that were substantially less than what he reported on each of the returns he filed with the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") and, as a result, he had taxable income and total tax owed greater than he reported. Those returns included over $300,000 in false withholding amounts.

If convicted, Naik faces up to three years in prison on each false return count. The IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) investigated the case, which Assistant United States Attorney John P. Scully will prosecute.

The public is cautioned that an indictment or criminal complaint is merely a charge, and the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.