FDA Worker Pleads Guilty to Multimillion Dollar Tax Refund Conspiracy | WPN World People News

A Jamaica, New York, resident pleaded on 14 July 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 Acting Assistant Attorney General Caroline D. Ciraolo of 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.

In 2013, a federal court permanently enjoined Hines from promoting a tax fraud scheme involving fraudulent Forms 1099-OID and from preparing tax returns for anyone other than herself.

U.S. District Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto scheduled Hines’ sentencing for Oct. 11. She faces a statutory maximum sentence of five years in prison, a term of supervised release, and monetary penalties. Chestnut and Henry previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States. Their sentencing hearings are pending.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice