LEWISTON – Tax cheats – Mainers who don’t file income tax forms or file fraudulent returns, or simply don’t pay state taxes – are costing the rest of us big bucks.

“There’s literally millions of dollars we’re being cheated out of,” said Assistant Attorney General William Baghdoyan. “No question about it.”

Baghdoyan estimates that his office prosecutes about 40 cases every year, and usually wins.

Most recently, his office successfully prosecuted a case against Manchester tax preparer Robert A. Grover, who has been permanently barred from preparing income tax forms – federal and state – for anyone but himself.

Grover, who is neither a certified public accountant nor an enrolled agent with the Internal Revenue Service, prepared tax returns for about 700 clients every year.

By “cheating” on everybody’s taxes in order to give them refunds and eliminate their taxes, Grover was able to inflate his client list for his own benefit, Baghdoyan said. Grover also underreported his personal taxes by between $25,000 and $30,000.

Convicted several months ago on multiple cases of tax evasion, Grover was supposed to be sentenced at the end of March, but his sentencing was delayed because of poor health.

Under a negotiated plea agreement, Baghdoyan expects Grover to be sentenced to serve four years in prison, with all but one year suspended, and to pay something on the order of $150,000 in restitution, including $25,000 at the time of sentencing.

The amount of restitution is unusual, with most cases ranging closer to $20,000.

In Auburn, Glenwood Pratt, 52, pleaded guilty to six counts of failure to pay tax or file returns for tax for years 1999 through 2004. He was sentenced to serve six months in jail, with all but 10 days suspended, and ordered to pay $22,469 in restitution.

According to court records, Pratt, who reported having $4 of personal assets at the time he was charged in 2006 and to be indigent in April 2008, has also been charged with violating his probation by smoking marijuana, not reporting to his probation officer and not paying any restitution since reaching his plea deal with the state. He had been court-ordered to pay $150 per month, but a check of court records in Androscoggin County Superior Court on Tuesday indicated he had not made the payments.

Pratt’s Auburn phone number is out of service and a call to his court-appointed attorney, Edward Rabasco, was not returned.

Last month, Charles V. Clune, 63, of Newburgh was indicted by a Penobscot County grand jury on four counts of failure to pay Maine income tax, according to the Bangor Daily News, and one count of failure to make and file Maine income tax returns.

In 2001, Clune was convicted of three similar counts, and sentenced to serve nine months in jail, with all but 10 days suspended. Because of his previous conviction, he faces much steeper penalties if convicted of the recent charges.

According to Baghdoyan, whose primary responsibility with the AG’s office is to prosecute tax crimes, such investigations are done by four employees in the Maine Revenue Services Criminal Investigation Unit, who are “dedicated to pursuing tax cheats and criminals.”

Calling Maine’s tax investigation unit “quite an active program,” Baghdoyan said he and others supervise dozens of people on probation for tax crimes and re-claim between $600,000 and $700,000 in court-ordered restitution in income tax cases each year. But millions more are lost every year.

In the case of Grover’s clients, Maine has waived penalties on taxes they owe, but the clients must pay back taxes and interest – some more than $100,000 – or face prosecution, even though they believed Grover was filing correct forms. Baghdoyan said that the underreported state income for Grover’s clients is “in the millions of dollars,” but the state is trying to work with them “because the vast majority of them were innocent victims, thinking this guy was great.”

Those clients face similar problems with the Internal Revenue Service for underreported federal income taxes.

There is no requirement in Maine for tax preparers to be licensed, certified or registered, Baghdoyan said, so people ought to ask about the credentials of their tax preparers.

“There are many very reputable accountants that are CPAs or enrolled agents in the state and, in fact, they do a fine job,” he said. “But then, there are people like Mr. Grover.”

Most people are honest in preparing their taxes, Baghdoyan said, but there are “a substantial percentage who either cheat or don’t pay their taxes – quite a few more than you believe. There’s more out there that we haven’t caught.”