California Woman Sentenced for Conspiracy to Defraud Internal Revenue Service and Wire Fraud | WPN World People News

A Fresno, California, resident was sentenced to serve 18 months in prison and pay $703,537 in restitution for conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by aiding to obtain payment of fraudulent tax refund claims and committing wire fraud, the Justice Department and IRS announced.

Pursuant to a plea agreement, Kathryn Darlene Coryell pleaded guilty to two counts of a 44-count indictment on June 26. Her co-defendant, Noemi Baez, pleaded guilty on Oct. 31, 2013, to charges of conspiring to defraud the IRS and committing aggravated identity theft.

According to the plea agreement, beginning around Feb. 28, 2008, and continuing through April 16, 2012, Coryell and Baez participated in a scheme to obtain and help others to obtain payment of false claims for tax refunds from the IRS by electronically filing fraudulent federal income tax returns. Using the names and social security numbers of numerous individuals, Coryell and Baez fabricated income information and filed materially false income tax returns claiming tax refunds derived from credits, including the Earned Income Credit, the Additional Child Tax Credit and the Making Work Pay Credit. In the plea agreement, Coryell admitted that, during the conspiracy, she and her co-defendant filed more than 150 false tax returns claiming fraudulent tax refunds totaling more than $400,000.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice