November 14, 2017

A California resident was sentenced to 54 months in prison for conspiring to file false claims for tax refunds, submitting false claims for tax refunds, mail fraud, and aggravated identity theft, announced the Justice Department’s Tax Division. According to documents and information provided to the court, Diep Vo aka Nancy Vo, 71, conspired with codefendant Trong Nguyen aka John Nguyen, to use the IDs of homeless and unemployed individuals in the San Jose, California area to file fraudulent claims for refunds with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Vo went to homeless shelters and halfway houses and falsely represented to individuals that she could get them money from a government program designed to assist people who had not worked in previous years. Vo convinced people to write down their names and social security numbers and to sign blank income tax returns. Vo and Nguyen then falsified the signed returns by including bogus income and income tax withheld amounts, and seeking fraudulent tax refunds totaling approximately $3.4 million. Vo and Nguyen directed the refund checks to private mailboxes they controlled. DOJ

Tagged in: Tax Fraud,