Maryland business owner sentenced to prison for employment tax and COVID-19 relief fraud

Date: March 5, 2026

Contact: [email protected]

Ellicott City, MD - A Maryland man was sentenced yesterday to two years in prison for COVID-19 relief fraud, willfully failing to file a tax return, and employment tax crimes, followed by one year of home confinement.

The following is based on court documents and statements made in court: Vince Akins, of Ellicott City, owned and operated several transportation companies that serviced different federal agencies. As the person who owned and operated these companies, Akins was responsible for withholding Social Security, Medicare and income taxes from his employees' wages and paying those funds over to the IRS each quarter. From the fourth quarter of 2019 through the fourth quarter of 2022, however, Akins collected but willfully failed to pay over trust fund taxes to the IRS on behalf of employees of the one transportation company that was still operating at the time.

Eventually all but one of Akins' transportation companies stopped operating. In 2020, he used false IRS documents to file four Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan applications on behalf of his other, defunct companies. After successfully obtaining these PPP loans, which were later forgiven, Akins transferred more than $150,000 of the loan proceeds to personal bank accounts in Nigeria. Akins also willfully failed to file a personal return for 2020 even though he was required to do so.

Akins caused a tax loss to the IRS exceeding $43,000 and he also received approximately $387,220 in fraudulent COVID-19 relief fraud proceeds.

In addition to the prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Benett for the District of Maryland ordered Akins to serve three years of supervised release.

IRS Criminal Investigation investigated the case.

Trial Attorneys Shawn Noud and Joseph D. G. Castro of the Criminal Division's Tax Section prosecuted the case.

IRS-CI is the law enforcement arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. It is the only federal law enforcement agency with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code. IRS-CI has 18 field offices located across the U.S. and maintains an international presence through attaché posts abroad.