There is a difference between being audited and being targeted.
My family knows that difference well.
Long before we were defendants in a federal criminal case, we were running a tax-preparation business that had grown out of years of helping people in our communities.
Our family worked with self-employed taxpayers, small businesses, farmers, and people who often did not understand what deductions or business expenses they were legally entitled to claim.
Columbia Tax Service grew from Plainview into San Angelo and later expanded into Amarillo, Odessa, and El Paso.
Then things changed.
In 2013, the IRS began auditing business returns prepared through our offices.
At first, those were in-person audits.
Later, they came through the mail.
The in-person audits repeatedly resulted in very large proposed deficiencies. During one of those audits, our attorney was told by an IRS employee that the agency was not really interested in the taxpayer.
They were interested in the tax preparers.
That changed everything.
Because when the audits kept coming, it stopped looking like individual taxpayers were being reviewed.
Our entire business was under scrutiny.
We Fought Back Through the Courts
My family did not simply accept what was happening.
We challenged it.
We helped fund Rivera v. IRS, a federal lawsuit filed in Santa Fe.
After Rivera came additional federal actions, including Ramirez v. IRS and Trevino v. United States.
Our family was named in Trevino.
Trevino was still pending when we were indicted.
The lawsuits were ultimately dismissed under the Anti-Injunction Act.
Look at the sequence.
We challenged the IRS.
We helped take the IRS to federal court.
And then we became the subjects of a federal criminal prosecution.
That sequence is one of the reasons I believe our prosecution was retaliatory.
More Than 3,700 Returns
By 2017, more than 3,700 tax returns connected to our practice had been pulled for review.
Think about that number.
More than three thousand seven hundred returns.
This was no longer about one deduction.
One client.
One tax return.
Our entire business was under the microscope.
And that raises a question that has stayed with me:
At what point does enforcement become targeting?
Government agencies absolutely have a responsibility to investigate fraud.
But they also have a responsibility to follow the law, respect due process, and exercise their authority fairly.
Accountability must work both ways.
Then Came the Criminal Case
Eventually, what began with audits and civil disputes became a criminal prosecution.
And then I sat inside a federal courtroom and watched the government's case unfold.
I watched clients testify about the information they gave us.
I watched evidence involving business schedules bearing clients' signatures.
I heard testimony from former employees.
And what I heard did not tell me that we had committed fraud.
It told me the opposite.
That is why I have never stopped asking questions about what happened to us.
The conflict with the government did not begin after our conviction.
The audits came first.
The complaints came first.
The lawsuits came first.
Then came the indictment.
That history matters.
This Is Why Transparency Matters
People hear the words IRS investigation or federal prosecution and often assume the government must have gotten everything right.
But government power should never be immune from scrutiny.
A person can be investigated.
A business can be audited.
A defendant can be prosecuted.
And the government should still have to answer difficult questions about how and why those decisions were made.
That isn't anti-government.
That's accountability.
If an agency follows the law, transparency should strengthen public trust.
If something went wrong, transparency is how we find out.
I lived through this.
I watched our business go from serving communities across Texas to being scrutinized by the federal government.
I watched my family fight the IRS in federal court.
I watched us become defendants ourselves.
And then I lost years of my freedom after a conviction I maintain was wrongful.
So I will keep asking the question:
Who investigates the investigators when the investigators get it wrong?
That question is bigger than my family.
It is bigger than Columbia Tax Service.
It is about every American who may one day find themselves standing across from an institution with more money, more attorneys, and more power than they could ever hope to have.
A fair system should not be afraid of scrutiny.
It should welcome it.
Because justice cannot simply be something the government demands from us.
Justice must also be something we can demand from the government.
— Blanca Granados