A federal judge in Brooklyn sentenced Tiffany Williams, 43, to 36 months in federal prison on May 13, 2026, for her role in a scheme that filed more than 8,000 fraudulent tax returns claiming approximately $600 million in pandemic-era employment tax credits [1]. The actual loss to the United States Treasury was approximately $45 million [1].
Williams and her co-conspirators filed the false returns between November 2021 and June 2023, targeting two specific COVID-19 relief programs: the Employee Retention Credit and the paid sick and family leave credit [1]. The Employee Retention Credit, created under the CARES Act, was designed to help businesses retain workers during pandemic-related disruptions. The paid sick and family leave credit was established under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. Both programs relied on employer self-reporting, a structural feature that investigators have identified as a recurring vector for large-scale fraud. Williams operated as a tax preparer, and prosecutors alleged she exploited that position to submit claims on behalf of clients who did not qualify for the credits [1].
The investigation was conducted jointly by IRS Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and Homeland Security Investigations [1]. The case was prosecuted by the DOJ National Fraud Enforcement Division [1]. Assistant U.S. Attorney Colin M. McDonald handled the prosecution, and the case fell within the district overseen by U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. for the Eastern District of New York [1]. The coordination across three federal law enforcement agencies reflects the Justice Department's sustained posture on pandemic fraud, which has included dedicated task forces and elevated prosecutorial priority since at least 2022.
The $600 million in fraudulent claims sought, set against $45 million in confirmed losses, illustrates a pattern common to large ERC fraud cases: a high volume of filings, many of which the IRS caught and rejected, with a subset clearing review before detection. The gap between claimed and actual loss is likely to figure in any co-conspirator proceedings that follow. No sentencing details for additional defendants were disclosed in the public record as of the sentencing date [1]. Williams's sentence falls within the range federal courts have imposed for comparable tax fraud conspiracies, though the scale of attempted loss here places this case among the more significant COVID-era fraud prosecutions to reach the sentencing phase.