{"id":22817,"date":"2018-03-09T09:23:54","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T14:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=22817"},"modified":"2018-03-09T09:41:34","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T14:41:34","slug":"alabama-resident-and-ringleader-of-multi-million-dollar-stolen-identity-tax-refund-fraud-schemes-sentenced-to-30-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2018\/03\/09\/alabama-resident-and-ringleader-of-multi-million-dollar-stolen-identity-tax-refund-fraud-schemes-sentenced-to-30-years-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Alabama Resident and Ringleader of Multi-Million Dollar Stolen Identity Tax Refund Fraud Schemes Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Over 8,800 Identities Stolen from the U.S. Army, Alabama State Agencies and Georgia Businesses<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n
Postal employees provided addresses on their routes to which the fraudulent refund checks could be directly mailed<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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3\/8\/18 – A Phenix City, Alabama, resident was sentenced today to 30 years in prison for his role in masterminding multiple stolen identity refund fraud (SIRF) schemes, announced Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard E. Zuckerman of the Justice Department\u2019s Tax Division and U.S. Attorney Louis V. Franklin, Sr. of the Middle District of Alabama.<\/p>\n

William Anthony Gosha III, a\/k\/a Boo Boo, was convicted, following a jury trial in November 2017, of one count of conspiracy, 22 counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, and 25 counts of aggravated identity theft.<\/p>\n

According to the evidence presented at trial and sentencing, between November 2010 and December 2013, Gosha ran a large-scale identity theft ring with his co-conspirators, Tracy Mitchell, Keshia Lanier, and Tamika Floyd, who were all previously convicted and sentenced to prison.\u00a0 Together they filed over 8,800 tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that sought more than $22 million in fraudulent refunds of which the IRS paid out approximately $9 million.<\/p>\n

In November 2010, Gosha stole IDs of inmates from the Alabama Department of Corrections and provided the IDs to Lanier who used the information to seek fraudulent tax refunds.\u00a0 Gosha and Lanier agreed to split the proceeds.\u00a0 Gosha also stole employee records from a company previously located in Columbus, Georgia.\u00a0 In 2012, Lanier needed an additional source of stolen IDs and approached Floyd, who worked at two Alabama state agencies in Opelika, Alabama: the Department of Public Health and the Department of Human Resources.\u00a0 In both positions, Floyd had access to the personal identifying information of individuals, including teenagers.\u00a0 Lanier requested that Floyd primarily provide her with identities that belonged to sixteen and seventeen year-olds.\u00a0 Floyd agreed and provided thousands of names to Lanier and others at Lanier\u2019s direction.\"\"<\/p>\n

After receiving the additional stolen IDs, Gosha recruited Mitchell and her family to help file the fraudulent tax returns.\u00a0 Mitchell worked at a hospital located at Fort Benning, Georgia, where she had access to the personal identification information of military personnel, including soldiers who were deployed to Afghanistan.\u00a0 She stole soldiers\u2019 IDs and used their information to file fraudulent returns.<\/p>\n

In order to electronically file the fraudulent returns, Gosha, Lanier, and their co-conspirators applied for several Electronic Filing Identification Numbers (EFIN) with the IRS in the names of sham tax preparation businesses.\u00a0 Gosha, Lanier, and their co-conspirators then used these EFINs to file the returns and obtain tax refund related bank products from various financial institutions, which provided them with blank check stock.\u00a0 Gosha and his co-conspirators initially printed out the fraudulently obtained refund checks using the blank check stock.<\/p>\n

However, the financial institutions halted Gosha\u2019s and his co-conspirators\u2019 ability to print checks.\u00a0 As a result, they recruited U.S. Postal employees who provided Gosha and others with addresses on their routes to which the fraudulent refund checks could be directly mailed.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 In exchange for cash, these postal employees intercepted the refund checks and provided them to Gosha, Lanier, Mitchell and others.\u00a0 Gosha also directed tax refunds to prepaid debit cards and had those cards sent to addresses he controlled.<\/p>\n

In addition, between January 2010 and December 2013, Gosha participated in a separate SIRF scheme with Pamela Smith and others, in which Gosha sold the IDs that he had stolen from the Alabama Department of Corrections to Smith and others.\u00a0 Smith and others used the IDs to file returns that sought approximately $4.8 million in fraudulent refunds of which the IRS paid out approximately $1.85 million.\u00a0 Smith also has been convicted and sentenced to prison for this conduct.<\/p>\n

At Gosha\u2019s sentencing, the government offered victim impact statements from several individuals whose identities were stolen, and from companies and governmental agencies where the identity theft breaches occurred.\u00a0 An Alabama Department of Public Health representative noted, the identity theft was not only devastating financially, but it also had a chilling effect on the department\u2019s ability to serve the residents of the State of Alabama.\u00a0 A mother of a young U.S. Army soldier who was an identity theft victim described the consequences of the fraud on her and her family, stating:<\/p>\n

While [my son] was fighting for our country and all back home[,] I received a very disturbing phone call from [an] Agent [] from the IRS that my son[,] while at Ft. Benning training to defend our country[,] the land of the free[,] had his identity stolen and fraudulent tax returns were filed with his social security number. \u00a0This news was devastating to think that my [] 19-year-old son[,] who was defending the very freedom this country stands [for] [,] was wronged by one of those people [he] was willing to die for.\u00a0 My whole family could not believe what was happening.\u00a0 We now had to worry about this terrible act by one of our own.\u00a0 As I tried my best to keep composed and handle all of the gruesome mounds of paperwork to get this straightened out with the IRS, [my son] was then denied his tax refund [as result of this scheme]. \u00a0This created a financial hardship on [him].\u00a0 We were too afraid to tell [him] while he was deployed because we did not want to worry him and we wanted him to focus only on getting home alive and not have to worry about such an atrocious act by someone who did not even know [him].<\/p>\n

In addition to the term of imprisonment, U.S. Chief District Court Judge Keith Watkins ordered Gosha to serve three years of supervised release and to pay restitution in the amount of $9,052,049.<\/p>\n

Prior to Gosha\u2019s sentencing, thirty of his co-conspirators have been sentenced, including Keisha Lanier who received 15 years and Tracy Mitchell who received over 13 years.<\/p>\n

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Zuckerman and U.S. Attorney Franklin commended special agents of Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation and U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General who investigated this case and Trial Attorneys Michael C. Boteler and Gregory P. Bailey of the Tax Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Ross of the Middle District of Alabama, who prosecuted the case.<\/p>\n

Additional information about the Tax Division and its enforcement efforts may be found on the division\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over 8,800 Identities Stolen from the U.S. Army, Alabama State Agencies and Georgia Businesses Postal employees provided addresses on their routes to which the fraudulent refund checks could be directly mailed 3\/8\/18 – A Phenix City, Alabama, resident was sentenced today to 30 years in prison for his role in masterminding multiple stolen identity refund […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","category-theftandfraud","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22817"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22824,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22817\/revisions\/22824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}