A 28-year-old Riviera Beach man was convicted of 29 charges this week in connection with what prosecutors described as a $6.1 million tax fraud scheme.

Corry Pearson, who operated Tax King in West Palm Beach, was found guilty of eight counts of aggravated identity theft, four counts of money laundering, 16 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud after a nearly two-week long jury trial in Miami.

Prosecutors claim he used the names of convicted criminals and others to file roughly 1,600 phony tax returns from 2012 to 2014. While the returns sought $6.1 million in refunds, the government paid out $1.3 million, prosecutors said.

Defense attorney Andrew Stine unsuccessfully tried to persuade the jury that others who worked for Pearson’s tax preparation business on Broadway were responsible for the fraud.

Two of his employees – Stephane Cindy Anor, 27, of West Palm Beach, and 51-year-old Riviera Beach resident Irene Wilson – previously pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the operation.

Since many of the charges are punishable by a maximum 20 years in prison, Stine said Pearson likely faces a lengthy sentence — possibly as much as 40 years in prison — when he appears before U.S. District Court Beth Bloom on Dec. 18.

Stine said it was stunning that Pearson, a former pizza deliveryman with no accounting background, could have pulled off such a lucrative scam of the federal government. Internal Revenue Service agents testified that the agency used to automatically send refunds without verifying people’s identities, he said. The quick-refund program was designed to get people their refunds quickly to stimulate the economy.

"I think it’s appalling that our government is losing billions of dollars to fraud," Stine said. Agents testified that the IRS now has a more robust verification program designed to curb fraud, he said.

Anor and Wilson led agents to Pearson, Stine said. Using Pearson’s business and home tax preparation software, prosecutors claimed the three filed returns on behalf of people whose identities they had stolen, including inmates who had been in prison for years. Pearson and the two women asked the IRS to deposit the refunds in their bank accounts or on debit cards they controlled.

On many of the returns, they claimed education credits for non-existent schooling or that taxes had improperly been taken from gambling winnings, prosecutors said.

Anor pleaded guilty on Aug. 29 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She is to be sentenced on Nov. 9. Wilson pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the federal government by making false claims. She was sentenced to a year of house arrest.

The case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service and the West Palm Beach and Jupiter police departments.