On Sept. 25, 2015, in Montgomery, Ala., Keisha Lanier, of Newnan, Ga., was sentenced to 180 months in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $5,811,406 for her role as the ringleader of a stolen identity tax refund fraud (SIRF) conspiracy. Between January 2011 and December 2013, Lanier and co-conspirator, Tracy Mitchell, led a large-scale identity theft ring that filed more than 9,000 false individual federal income tax returns that claimed more than $24 million in fraudulent claims for tax refunds.
The IRS paid out close to $10 million in refunds on these fraudulent claims. The defendants obtained the stolen identities from various sources, including from the U.S. Army, several Alabama state agencies, a Georgia call center and employee records from a Georgia company. In order to file the false tax returns, the defendants obtained several IRS Electronic Filing Numbers in the names of sham tax businesses.
The defendants directed the IRS to pay the anticipated tax refunds to prepaid debit cards, buy U.S. Treasury checks and to financial institutions, which in turn issued the tax refunds via prepaid debit cards or checks. When the refunds were sent through the financial institutions, the defendants simply printed out the refund checks from the check stock that had been sent to their homes.
After the financial institutions stopped the defendants from printing out the tax refund checks, the defendants recruited U.S. Postal Service employees. The corrupt postal employees gave the defendants specific addresses along their postal routes for mailing the U.S. Treasury checks. Once the checks came to the address, the postal employees took the checks and turned them over to the defendants for a fee.
The scheme also involved a complex money laundering operation. Almost $10 million in fraudulent tax refund checks were cashed at several businesses located in Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky. In Alabama on Aug. 7, 2015 eight residents of Alabama and Georgia were sentenced for their roles in the conspiracy:
- Tracy Mitchell was sentenced to 159 months in prison and ordered to pay a forfeiture judgment in the amount of $329,242, which was seized in cash from her residence;
- Talarius Paige was sentenced to 60 months in prison and ordered to pay $762,512 in restitution to the IRS;
- Mequetta Snell-Quick was sentenced to 24 months and one day in prison and ordered to pay $199,471 in restitution to the IRS;
- Latasha Mitchell was sentenced to 36 months in prison and ordered to pay $513,821 in restitution to the IRS;
- Dameisha Mitchell was sentenced to 65 months in prison and ordered to pay $440,176 in restitution to the IRS;
- Sharonda Johnson was sentenced to 24 months in prison and ordered to pay $440,176 in restitution to the IRS;
- Patrice Taylor was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison and ordered to pay $28,783 in restitution to the IRS; and
- Cynthia Johnson was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay $5,047 in restitution to the IRS.
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