From the U.S. Attorney:
Suburban Chicago Tax Professional Sentenced to More Than Ten Years in Federal Prison for Stealing Client and Investor Funds
CHICAGO — A suburban Chicago tax professional who fraudulently obtained more than $2.5 million from clients and investors under false pretenses has been sentenced to more than ten years in federal prison.
ADAM R. OLIVA, 43, of Rolling Meadows, Ill., pleaded guilty last year in two federal fraud cases.
Oliva was sentenced in December to six years in federal prison for one of the cases, and on Wednesday he received an additional four-and-a-half-year sentence for the other case.
The prison terms must be served consecutively, for a total period of incarceration of ten and a half years.
In one case, Oliva held himself out as a tax professional who did business under various names, including Oliva and Associates LLC and The Oliva Group LLC.
From 2015 to 2020, Oliva fraudulently induced clients to provide him with money for the purported purpose of paying their income taxes.
Oliva instead kept the money for himself.
Oliva also admitted that he filed false tax returns on behalf of some of those clients, reflecting no or lower tax liabilities in order to make it less likely that the IRS would contact the clients about their unpaid tax liabilities.
In the other case, Oliva duped investors who had provided him with money to fund purported short-term loans to clients.
Oliva promised those investors that they would receive returns of 10-20% on their investments.
In reality, he never intended to make any short-term loans.
Instead, he pocketed the investors’ money and used it for personal expenses, including gambling, meals at restaurants, and retail purchases.
The sentences were announced by Morris Pasqual, Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Ramsey E. Covington, Acting Special Agent-in-Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation Chicago Field Office, and Vincent R. Zehme, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Region of the FDIC’s Office of Inspector General. The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Rick D. Young.
