Stop losing sleep over your tax situation. I'm Darrin Mish — a tax attorney in Tampa who's spent 32 years handling exactly this kind of problem. Here's what you need to know.
In a recent case of identity theft, a Barbados national residing legally in the US stole the identities of several hundred dead people to claim tax refunds totaling more than $120 million.
Andrew Watts, 35, was convicted after he pleaded guilty in July to one count of mail fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. According to prosecutors, Watts submitted 645 bogus tax returns under the names of these dead people between 2007 and this year to claim more than $120 million in tax refunds. Out of the amount he claimed, Watts received about $19 million in refund checks before the IRS caught up with him.
Watts deposited most of the money into an array of bank accounts that were duly frozen once his scam was discovered by the IRS. However, Watts did manage to spend more than $1.6 million to rent apartments in New York, Beverly Hills and Chicago, buy a Mercedes Benz SUV and jewelry, give cash to his girlfriend, and make several flights back and forth from California to New York.
Watts was sentenced to 7 ½ years’ imprisonment for mail fraud and 2 years’ jail time for aggravated identity theft by US District Judge Joan Gottschall. He also has to repay almost $1.7 million in restitution.
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