There is no question the preparers should have been sentenced. This practice is rampant among unregulated preparers and the only issue is the IRS does not have the tools to find all of them. The additional issue is that the taxpayers involved knew full well their returns were fraudulent and were complicit in the scheme by filing the returns. There is plenty of blame to go around and the IRS should also take a look at the taxpayers' involvement. They were willing to accept refunds when they signed the returns. Let's not assume that taxpayers do not know what is going into their returns or what is going on.