Teneika Reynolds

Introduction

Teneika Reynolds, 50, of Raymore, Missouri, was the owner and operator of TR Tax Service, a tax preparation business operating in Kansas City, and she pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Greg Kays to aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns. The plea admitted a five-year pattern: for tax years 2019 through 2023, Reynolds prepared and electronically filed returns claiming false items — fabricated Schedule C business expenses, false Forms 7202 for sick and family leave credits, and fictitious household help income — that produced refunds larger than her clients were entitled to receive. She assisted at least 15 individuals in filing at least 33 false and fraudulent income tax returns across that period. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation, and the offense carries up to three years in federal prison.

Background Information

TR Tax Service was Reynolds’s own business, and the scheme ran through its ordinary function: clients came to a preparer they trusted, and the returns that came back carried items the clients may never have known were invented. The false items spanned three categories — Schedule C business expenses that inflated business losses, sick and family leave credits claimed on Forms 7202, a pandemic-era credit with strict eligibility rules, and fictitious household help income. The result was the same in each case: refunds larger than the law allowed, filed electronically under Reynolds’s preparation. The case was investigated by Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Rudolph R. Rhodes IV, and it falls under the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division effort announced in April. The announcement describes no other personal or business history, and this page does not guess at any.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Pleaded guilty; sentencing pending. Reynolds pleaded guilty to aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns; sentencing follows the presentence investigation and carries up to three years in prison.

According to the announcement, Reynolds prepared and electronically filed returns claiming false items including Schedule C business expenses, false Forms 7202 sick and family leave credits, and fictitious Household Help income for client-taxpayers for tax years 2019 to 2023, resulting in refunds larger than what her clients were entitled to receive. In total she assisted at least 15 individuals in filing at least 33 false and fraudulent income tax returns. The plea papers anchor the scheme to a specific filing: on February 8, 2022, Reynolds aided and assisted in the filing of an IRS Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, on which she included false sick and family leave credits, resulting in a fraudulent refund. That return stands in the record as the sample of a practice that ran across five consecutive tax years and dozens of returns filed through her Kansas City business.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The consequences on the record are the guilty plea itself and the sentencing exposure that follows it: under federal statutes Reynolds faces up to three years in federal prison without parole, with the actual sentence to be determined by the court based on the advisory sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors after the presentence investigation. The announcement records no public statement from Reynolds or defense counsel, and no separate civil or professional proceeding is documented in it — the enrolled-agent and preparer consequences, if any, are not part of the release. The institutional response is the IRS Criminal Investigation work that built the case and the National Fraud Enforcement Division framing under which it was announced, part of the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance. For her clients, the filings they signed are now part of a federal fraud record.

Current Status

Reynolds has pleaded guilty to aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns and awaits sentencing, which will be scheduled after the United States Probation Office completes its presentence investigation before Judge Greg Kays. Her plea covers the 2019-2023 scheme, the 15-plus clients, and the 33-plus false returns admitted in the case, including the February 8, 2022, Form 1040 with fabricated leave credits. The announcement did not report any restitution figure, trial date, or other pending proceeding, so the recorded posture stands: pleaded, awaiting sentencing, with a three-year statutory maximum ahead. The release gives no indication that TR Tax Service continues to operate, and this page does not assume either way.

Impact on Their Career/Life

For a tax preparer, the guilty plea ends the profession by its own terms: Reynolds admitted in federal court that the returns she prepared and filed for her clients were false, and no licensing or client base survives that admission intact. At 50, she faces up to three years in prison and the permanent federal fraud record that follows — the five-year scheme, the invented leave credits, the phantom household employees, and the fabricated business expenses are all now documented admissions rather than allegations. The case also marks the returns’ 15-plus clients, whose 2019-2023 filings are implicated in the scheme, and it closes the book on TR Tax Service as a going concern in the record: the business’s own owner has pleaded guilty to making its core product fraudulent.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Missouri, "Raymore Woman Pleads Guilty to Tax Refund Fraud Scheme," November 4, 2026. source