Florida prison inmate and family members charged for scheming tax fraud
March 10th, 2010 - 5:24 am ICT by BNO NewsMIAMI, FLORIDA (BNO NEWS) – A prison inmate, and three members of his family were charged for their alleged participation in a scheme to file false tax returns on behalf of inmates, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Shawn Clarke, 37, a prison inmate in the Monroe County Jail, in Key West, Florida, began a scheme to defraud the IRS by recruiting and submitting false tax return forms in the name of fellow inmates, former inmates and relatives, for tax years 2004 through 2007.
Clarke, along with his mother, Sally Frost, his sister, Deanna Heder, and William Clarke, his brother falsely claimed that the supposed taxpayers had been employed and paid withholding taxes during the aforementioned years, but in reality, the purported taxpayers had not worked as reported, had not earned the reported income, and had not had income withheld as claimed.
Frost, 63, of Delray Beach, Heder, 39, of Ft. Myers, and Clarke, 40, also of Delray Beach, Florida, respectively, were to receive the resulting IRS refund checks. They were to cash the checks, sometimes using fraudulent powers of attorneys, give the cash to inmate Shawn Clarke, who would divide the money between himself, the co-conspirators, and the complicit inmates.
Frost, Heder and Clarke made their initial appearances in federal court on Tuesday while Clarke is in custody and will make his first appearance later this month.
If convicted, the defendants face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for conspiracy to defraud the IRS, and a maximum of up to 5 years in prison on each of the several counts of making a false claim to the IRS.
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