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Look Who Got Caught Filing $19 Million In Fraudulent Tax Returns

The tax system is confusing and frustrating. It’s made even worse when people abuse it.

Rich people use loopholes to avoid paying taxes. But even more sinister people outright defraud the U.S. government for hefty tax returns.

But at least in this one case, the criminals were brought to justice.

WNYT.com - NY aims to reject $500M in 'bogus' tax refunds this year

From Daily Caller:

An Alabama man allegedly used stolen IDs from prisoners to file 7,000 tax returns with the IRS to obtain $19 million in fraudulent refunds. He also recruited U.S. Postal employees as part of the tax refund scheme.

Anthony Gosha, also known as Boo Boo, and several co-conspirators were charged with conspiring to file fraudulent refund claims, mail and wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, according to the U.S. Department of Justice…

The indictment alleges that Gosha used IDs of inmates from the Alabama Department of Corrections. His co-conspirators also obtained IDs from multiple sources including the Alabama Department of Public Health.

They also obtained several electronic filing identification numbers in the names of sham tax preparation business to file the fraudulent tax returns…

Gosha and his co-conspirators directed the Internal Revenue Service to issue the refunds to prepaid debit cards, U.S. Treasury checks and financial institutions, the indictment stated.

In addition,U.S. Postal Service employees were recruited to provide addresses on their mail routes so the fraudulent refund checks could be received.

You’d never expect a man called “Boo Boo” to be able to hatch such a complicated scheme. Honestly, it sounds like something that would evade his grasp.

Yet again, he was caught, so maybe he wasn’t as clever as it seems.

What’s truly shocking was the fact he enlisted the help of postal workers. Working for the Post Office is no picnic, but you expect the people handling your mail to be relatively honest and law abiding.

It’s not fun to think some of them were stealing millions from the IRS. What else could they be up to?

A bigger question is, will that $19 million be returned to the government? Most likely it’s already been spent. More tax dollars wasted.

Source: Daily Caller

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