IRS agent pleads guilty to filing false tax returns

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You’d think someone who works for the Internal Revenue Service would know how to cheat on his taxes without getting caught.

But IRS agent Albert Bront pleaded guilty Wednesday to filing false tax returns for himself and some of his relatives and obtaining thousands of dollars in fraudulent refunds.

Bront, 51, admitted filing bogus returns for 2003 to 2007, claiming excessive deductions and failing to report some income. Among the false deductions, Bront declared that he had paid $12,000 in alimony that he had not paid, prosecutors said.

In addition, Bront admitted filing false returns for some relatives without their knowledge and keeping the refunds he received.

Bront, who has been on unpaid leave from the IRS since his arrest in 2009, worked as a revenue agent at an undisclosed office in Southern California. He will be jailed until his sentencing, scheduled for April 13 before U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II in Los Angeles, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a news release.

As a result of the guilty pleas, Bront faces a maximum sentence of nine years in federal prison. He has agreed to pay $127,000 in restitution to the federal government.

Bront was initially indicted in 2009 on charges of threatening to harm agents who served a search warrant at his Santa Clarita home. As part of a plea bargain, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the threat charge.

-- Stuart Pfeifer