An Edmonton tax preparer has been found guilty of filing millions of dollars in fraudulent tax claims to the Canadian Revenue Agency.

An Edmonton tax preparer was found guilty Thursday of filing millions of dollars in false tax claims on behalf of unwitting clients.

Provincial court Judge Joyce Lester convicted Chander Mohan Sharma of one count of defrauding the Canada Revenue Agency of over $5,000.

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Lester found that Sharma, 58, was responsible for about $2.9 million in false claims. During the trial, court heard that this resulted in about $600,000 of fraud in the form of tax revenue owed to the Government of Canada.

While delivering her reasons for decision, Lester said that she relied on evidence from 11 of Sharma’s 16 former clients who testified about how he filed false or inflated expenses on their behalf when submitting both professional and personal income tax returns for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010. During the trial in the fall of 2016, there were more than 500 documents filed as evidence, and court also heard testimony from Canada Revenue Agency employees.

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Investigators were able to link the filings containing false claims back to Sharma’s office computer and personal laptop.

Sharma’s clients, whose education level ranged from post-secondary to illiteracy, all believed he was an “experienced, qualified professional.” Court heard that although Sharma told the clients his fee was 50 per cent of any refund received, he also indicated he would go through their old tax returns, up to 10 years back, and recover money that they were owed.

“Given this suggested added incentive to retaining his services, the taxpayer witnesses were agreeable to his fee structure,” the judge wrote.

Sharma filed expenses related to self-employment, employment and farming that were either inflated or “wholly fictitious.”

The judge noted that many of the witnesses testified that they’d “received very little information as to what they were signing” when they met with Sharma at his southeast Edmonton office, where he operated his business under the name Tax Doctors Corp.

Sharma, who called no evidence during the trial, sat in the courtroom gallery and listened to Lester read her reasons for decision, but stood next to his lawyer when she pronounced him guilty.

In February 2010, Chander was convicted of fraud and uttering a forged document in a different scheme that involved stealing $150,000 in income-tax payments. He pleaded guilty in that case after being arrested in Arizona and extradited back to Canada, and was handed a 15-month jail sentence.

A two-day sentencing has been scheduled for January. In the meantime, Sharma’s lawyer, Paul Moreau, requested a pre-sentencing report be prepared.

Sharma declined to comment on the verdict after the hearing.