Gezelle Amaechi, age 40, of Buckeye, pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiracy in a tax fraud scheme. Her sentencing is set for November 5, 2012.
Amaechi’s co-defendents, Latricia Williams, of Buckeye, is scheduled to be sentenced on September 21, 2012, and Shelton Tanner, of Tucson, received 60 months in prison for their roles in the tax fraud scheme.
Amaechi worked during 2008 for an organization that provided services to disabled people. According to court documents, Amaechi, Williams, and Tanner used the stolen identities to claim more than $1,000,000 in bogus tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), resulting in the IRS paying out more than $300,000 in false refunds.
The group used their neighbors’ unsecured wireless networks to file including the false tax returns electronically. They directed the refunds to prepaid debit card accounts they had obtained under false identities, and recruiting friends and associates to receive the prepaid debit cards by mail at various addresses.
In addition to defrauding the IRS, the trio harmed the victims whose identities were used in the tax fraud scheme. They targeted disabled individuals for the identity theft portion of the conspiracy because they believed that those victims were less likely to file tax returns on their own, meaning the scheme would be more likely to succeed. As a result of the false income reported on the fraudulent tax returns, however, a number of the victims’ Social Security Administration (SSA) disability payments were temporarily affected.
The maximum penalty for these crimes is five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.