Tax Lady Roni Deutch allowed reprehensible activities to occur at her former law firm. Despite a $34 million lawsuit, allegations of destruction of evidence and contempt of court charge, she has defied authorities in so many ways that it seems there is no limit to her audacity. That arrogance is now firmly in the hands of her successor firm, the Juceam Group.
Roni Deutch intentionally diverted assets away from her victims in violation of court order. She failed to make a $435,000 payment to her victims even though she withdrew $241,000 for her own personal use. Sales leads were diverted to Juceam Group, which is a successor law firm that she controls.
The Juceam Group paid $72,350 in a settlement to the state of California in a Final Judgment to settle allegations that sales leads from Deutch’s former firm were given to Juceam Group even though Deutch was prohibited from transferring any assets by the court. Roni Deutch created Funtax, Inc. which does business as Juceam Group.
The amazing results touted by large tax representation firms like the Roni Deutch Tax Center are based on the Offer in Compromise program that is sometimes available through the Internal Revenue Service. The problem with the claims of huge tax settlements is that most customers will not qualify for this program. Despite this, tax settlement firms continue to make empty promises and take fees from clients that should be paying their taxes.
If you are thinking about doing business with the Juceam Group, you should thoroughly research the firm before signing any contract. Consider the many regulatory actions taken against Roni Deutch for what then California Attorney General Jerry Brown described as “orchestrating a ‘heartless scheme’ that swindled thousands of people facing serious and expensive tax collection problems with the IRS.” Her quoted 99% success rate was actually only 10%. In 2011 she was charged with diverting funds away from victim refunds for her own benefit.
Simply looking at the tax settlement industry as a whole will show you that it is dominated by numerous tax relief scams by industry leaders, including Roni Deutch, JK Harris, TaxMasters and American Tax Relief. So far newer firms Blue Tax and Juceam Group appear to be maintaining favorable ratings with the Better Business Bureau initially. It remains to be seen if they will be able to avoid regulatory problems and maintain positive ratings.
Still, with the ties of the Juceam Group and Roni Deutch Tax Center, it would be a pretty big leap of faith to entrust the firm with your case, not to mention the thousands of dollars in fees you would have to pay. Then again, finding a national firm to provide an accurate assessment of your prospects and honest support is a crap shoot at best.
The best options are to either contact the IRS yourself, or to hire a reputable tax attorney to represent you. At least that way you can get support from an actual attorney rather than an office of paper pushers and sales reps who rarely even see the attorneys that skim the profits from these types of operations.
Long is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. in Industrial Relations. He subsequently received his Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Duke University. His Certificate in Financial Planning was issued by Florida State University.
Long has achieved the Accredited Credit Counselor and Accredited Financial Counselor certifications through the Association for Financial Counseling, Planning and Education. Long originally achieved the Certified Credit Counselor designation through the National Institute for Financial Education.
In addition to years of nonprofit leadership, Long has been an innovator in the field of volunteer tax return preparation programs. He assists volunteer associations and nonprofit organizations who seek to integrate credit counseling and asset-building programs with free personal income tax preparation. His approach to using free credit reports as both an incentive and a screening tool for placement into asset-building programs has been shared with members of the National Community Tax Coalition, the EITC-Carolinas Initiative of MDC, Inc. and nonprofit groups across the Carolinas.
Long assists members of our armed forces in the Carolinas, Iowa, Rhode Island, Georgia and Germany with financial readiness. Please support our Soldiers, Marines, Airmen and Sailors!
Favorite quote:
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
Thomas Jefferson
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