BATON ROUGE – The owner of a chain of tax preparation businesses faces fraud charges after the Louisiana Department of Revenue says he schemed to defraud the state of payroll taxes and inflated income tax refunds.

Leroi Gorman Jackson, owner of Taxman Financial Services, LLC, is accused of withholding payroll taxes from the paychecks of 103 employees during the 2016 tax year and failing to remit the state. The payroll withholding scheme cost the state an estimated total of $21, 891, according to the Louisiana Department of Revenue.

Jackson is accused of also submitting income tax returns on behalf of clients during the 2015 tax year that contained fake business losses, resulting in an estimated $20,000 in fraudulent tax refunds. Jackson pleaded guilty to a similar scheme in 2014.

The Department of Revenue says that in that scheme, he admitted to fabricating business losses on behalf of taxpayers who had not claimed any losses and in many cases were not business owners.

Jackson was booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on charges of theft, principal to injuring public records, principal to illegal transmission of monetary funds and criminal penalty for failure to account for state tax monies.

Jackson's arrest is a part of an anti-fraud initiative of the Department of Revenue and the state Attorney General's Office.