Nevada Woman Pleads Guilty to Fraudulently Claiming Covid Relief Funds

A Nevada business owner prepared and filed false tax returns to fraudulently obtain Covid relief money for her businesses and others, prosecutors said.

Some people binge-watched shows during the Covid pandemic. Others picked up pickleball. But according to federal prosecutors, one Las Vegas woman prepared and filed false tax returns for her business and others at a busy average rate of nearly 80 per month.

Over a 16-month period beginning in June 2022, the Justice Department said Friday, the woman, Candies Goode-McCoy, filed more than 1,200 returns in order to fraudulently claim Covid-19 tax credits of nearly $100 million.

Ms. Goode-McCoy, 34, who pleaded guilty under a plea agreement on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas to charges of conspiracy to defraud the government, managed to get the I.R.S. to pay out about $33 million, prosecutors said. She took $1.3 million of that herself, they said, and received an additional $800,000 from those for whom she prepared the false returns.

Ms. Goode-McCoy, who could face as much as 10 years in prison when she is sentenced in February 2026, used the money to gamble at casinos, take vacations and buy luxury cars, prosecutors said. She also purchased designer clothing from Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci and Louis Vuitton, court documents show.

Her lawyer could not be reached for comment on Friday.

According to prosecutors, the businesses for which Ms. Goode-McCoy prepared taxes were not eligible to receive the refundable credits in the amounts claimed.

Under the plea agreement, Ms. Goode-McCoy agreed to return most of the $33 million that was fraudulently obtained.

The fraudulent tax returns were filed from around June 2022 through September 2023, officials said. The refunds that Ms. Goode-McCoy sought were based on the Employee Retention Credit and the Sick and Family Leave Credit programs, court documents showed.

The tax credits were part of trillions in relief money, approved by Congress and sent to individuals and businesses after the Covid-19 pandemic began five years ago.

The Employee Retention Credit program offered companies thousands of dollars per employee if they could show that the pandemic was hurting their businesses but that they were continuing to pay workers. Sick and Family Leave Credit offered tax breaks to employers who voluntarily gave their workers paid sick and family leave if they needed to take time off because of the pandemic.

The businesses Ms. Goode-McCoy owned were incorporated in Nevada, court documents show, and carried names like Changing Lives Movement, Exclusive Flavors, Queen Smith Professional Corporation and Candies King Elliott.

Investigators said that she had worked with others, including an unidentified co-conspirator, to use commercial tax preparation software to remotely file 1,227 forms, even though none of the people or businesses she applied for had been eligible for those tax credits or in the amounts that she claimed.

She "always knew that the Forms 941 she was filing were fraudulent," prosecutors said in court documents, referring to the forms that employers use to report income taxes, Social Security tax or Medicare tax withheld from employees' paychecks.

Government investigators have struggled to keep up with pandemic-related fraud, focusing their efforts and limited resources on large, multimillion-dollar cases. Federal prosecutors have used novel methods and have even relied on private citizens to hunt for potential cases of fraud.

Washington distributed billions of dollars with few strings and little oversight as part of its response to the pandemic.

The Small Business Administration's inspector general has estimated that more than $200 billion -- or at least 17 percent of the pandemic loans that the agency distributed -- was awarded to "potentially fraudulent actors."

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.