A Sorrento Valley tax preparer pleaded guilty Aug. 10 to orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot in which he asked a would-be hit man to kill a La Jolla woman and two other people who were his former clients. No attempts were made on the lives of three people as Steven Martinez, 51, was arrested in February along with his limo driver, Norman Russell Thellmann, 64, after the would-be hit man notified the FBI. Martinez faces a maximum sentence of 98 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Sentencing was set for Nov. 30 by U.S. District Court Judge William Hayes. Martinez remains in custody without bail. Martinez also pleaded guilty to soliciting a violent crime, money laundering, witness tampering, procuring false tax returns, Social Security fraud, aggravated identity theft and making false tax returns from his business. Martinez showed photos of the La Jolla woman and her condominium entrances and exits. He recommended the hit man use different firearms for each homicide and suggested he use a silencer. Those witnesses had been expected to testify in Martinez’s trial for mail fraud, and he was free on bond when he made the murder for hire plot. Martinez was a former agent with the Internal Revenue Service, and as a tax preparer, he instructed his clients to pay their tax debts to client trust accounts instead of the IRS. Martinez then used those accounts for his own purposes, according to U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy. Martinez may be ordered to pay $11 million in restitution for what Duffy described as “stolen taxpayer funds.” He filed two sets of tax returns for some clients, one of which showed they owed a lot of taxes and another return with the IRS that showed they didn’t owe very much. Federal agents found $42,400 in cash hidden inside a cereal box inside Thellmann’s home, and he pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to commit money laundering. Thellmann claimed his role was only to furnish money to someone that Martinez had referred him to, and didn’t know about the murder for hire plot. Thellman will be sentenced Oct. 22 and is free on $50,000 bond.