{"id":8149,"date":"2014-07-31T08:46:05","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T13:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=8149"},"modified":"2014-07-31T08:46:05","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T13:46:05","slug":"tax-fraud-is-huge-these-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2014\/07\/31\/tax-fraud-is-huge-these-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax Fraud Is Huge These Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tax fraud by federal, former federal, and postal<\/a>, employees seems to be an easy and quick way to make money, and get prison time, these days. The couple outlined in the Justice Department article below took away BIG cash from their scheme…now they’re BIG time for their actions.<\/p>\n

Former Federal Employees Sentenced To Prison For Tax Fraud<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Married Couple, Both Federal Retirees, Falsely Claimed more than $723,000 Tax Refund<\/em><\/h2>\n

U.S. Department of\u00a0Justice<\/p>\n

July 25, 2014 – A married couple from Whidbey Island, Washington, both of whom had lengthy careers as federal employees, was sentenced today to prison for conspiracy to defraud the government and making false or fraudulent claims, announced U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan.\u00a0 DEBRA A. AARON, 60, was sentenced to five years in prison and SAMUEL A. AARON, 71, was sentenced to 30 months in prison.\u00a0 Both were sentenced to three years of supervised release and $723,275 in restitution.\u00a0 SAMUEL AARON had a distinguished military career and then worked for the Federal Aviation Administration for more than 25 years.\u00a0 Noting that service, Chief Judge Marsha J. Pechman told him, \u201cThis kind of theft from the government cannot go on.\u00a0 You violated the trust of every veteran; you violated the trust of every school child; you violated the trust of every employee of the FAA.\u201d\u00a0 \"fraud-and-theft\"<\/a><\/p>\n

According to records filed in the case, in 2008 the AARONs promoted a well-known fraudulent tax scheme known as 1099 OID fraud.\u00a0 Using the scheme, the couple claimed they were owed a tax refund of $723,275.\u00a0 DEBRA AARON filed similar bogus claims on behalf of 30 other people for more than $14 million.\u00a0 Some $4 million was paid out before the IRS caught the fraud.\u00a0 The AARONs used a shell company to launder the proceeds of the scheme and claimed some of the money was used to help impoverished women in third world countries.\u00a0 In fact they used the money for a home remodel, expensive trips to Sedona, Arizona and the Caribbean, lavish outings to Las Vegas and other luxuries.<\/p>\n

DEBRA AARON retired following a lengthy career at a variety of government jobs, retiring as a management consultant for the FAA.\u00a0 At the sentencing hearing Chief Judge Pechman told her \u201cI can\u2019t find any other motivation for doing this other than greed\u2026. The public trust has been violated.\u00a0 Chief Judge Pechman noted that DEBRA AARON had recruited at least two of her friends to participate in the scheme, and now \u201ctheir lives are quite devastated\u201d by their criminal conviction and sentence.<\/p>\n

The IRS has repeatedly publicized 1099-OID fraud, warning taxpayers about submitting fraudulent claims.\u00a0 The IRS website states:<\/p>\n

False Form 1099 Refund Claims\u00a0<\/strong>
\nIn some cases, individuals have made refund claims based on the bogus theory that the federal government maintains secret accounts for U.S. citizens and that taxpayers can gain access to the accounts by issuing 1099-OID forms to the IRS. In this ongoing scam, the perpetrator files a fake information return, such as a Form 1099 Original Issue Discount (OID), to justify a false refund claim on a corresponding tax return.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t fall prey to people who encourage you to claim deductions or credits to which you are not entitled or willingly allow others to use your information to file false returns. \u00a0If you are a party to such schemes, you could be liable for financial penalties or even face criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n

The case was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) and was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Kate Vaughan and Thomas Woods.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tax fraud by federal, former federal, and postal, employees seems to be an easy and quick way to make money, and get prison time, these days. The couple outlined in the Justice Department article below took away BIG cash from their scheme…now they’re BIG time for their actions. Former Federal Employees Sentenced To Prison For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8150,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theftandfraud","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8149","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=8149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8151,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8149\/revisions\/8151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}