Missouri – A dentist from Sedalia, Missouri, has been sentenced to federal prison for evading taxes on over $617,000 in earnings.
Nohaud Naseef Azan, 66, faced the legal repercussions of his actions in federal court earlier this week, where U.S. District Judge Roseann A. Ketchmark handed down a sentence of one year and one day in federal prison without the possibility of parole. Additionally, Azan has been ordered to pay $269,517 in restitution to the IRS, the sum representing the tax loss incurred over a six-year period due to his fraudulent activities.
Azan entered a guilty plea on December 15, 2022, to a charge of attempting to interfere with the administration of internal revenue laws. Operating his own dental practice in Sedalia, Azan came under IRS scrutiny in 2011 following an audit. This audit revealed the improper deduction of personal expenses on his corporate tax returns for the preceding three years.
Further investigations uncovered Azan’s strategy to evade tax payments. In an attempt to continue covering personal expenses through his business, he either cashed patients’ checks written out to the dental practice or deposited them into his personal bank account. From 2011 through 2018, the IRS identified over 1,000 such checks that Azan had misappropriated.
Azan admitted to using the funds from these cashed checks for personal expenses, notably to support his gambling habit, while failing to report this income on his personal and corporate tax returns. The court documents reveal that Azan cashed a total of $617,472 in patients’ checks for personal use from 2013 to 2018.
The IRS-Criminal Investigation was in charge of the investigation, while the case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron M. Maness.
