Florida authorities are constantly on the lookout for financial crimes, since the state has seen more than its share. In particular, tax crime cases have become more and more prevalent. A recent one just resulted in two convictions.
The two men at the center of the case, both 29 years old, live in Miramar and Aventura respectively. Both were found guilty on by a federal jury on Wednesday of multiple charges. The charges included aggravated identity theft, wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Services.
According to reports, the two men orchestrated a multimillion dollar tax fraud scheme that included multiple instances of identity theft. They were accused of recruiting co-conspirators to help them in their scheme by getting those co-conspirators to file false tax returns. They did so using stolen personal identification information. Some of that information was from living individuals, and some of it was from deceased individuals.
They then set up bank accounts, Electronic Filing Identification Numbers and businesses using the stolen information. In total, they filed about $35 million in claims for refunds. They were able to actually cash $14 million of that.
At the time, both were presidents of tax preparation businesses that were located in Miami. Now both face two years each for identity theft, five years each for conspiracy and twenty years each for each wire fraud count.
This tax crime case involved amounts over $10 million. Other Florida tax crime cases may involve lesser amounts and will have their own sets of circumstances. Those circumstances will affect the charges that are filed. An experienced criminal defense attorney can help those accused in similar cases explore all of their options.
Source: Sun Sentinel, “Miramar man among many guilty of identity theft, tax refund fraud” Wayne K. Roustan, Mar. 05, 2014