July 14, 2016

A Jamaica, New York, resident pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, announced the Justice Department’s Tax Division. Nafeesah Hines, 46, who worked at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), admitted that between 2008 and 2012, she participated in a scheme to submit false tax returns seeking fraudulent income tax refunds in excess of $3.4 million to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). According to the indictment, Hines worked with Rodney Chestnut, a retired New York City Department of Correction officer, and Clive Henry, a former IRS employee in the business of preparing tax returns, to recruit clients to this scheme, which involved using fraudulent IRS Forms 1099-OID to falsely claim refunds of taxes that were never paid over to the IRS. The indictment alleged that Hines, Chestnut, and Henry collected fees from clients based on a percentage of the refunds received, and supplied the clients with correspondence containing false and frivolous claims to send to the IRS in response to IRS warning letters regarding the false tax returns. DOJ

Tagged in: Tax Fraud,