The ringleader of a stolen identity tax fraud ring was sentenced in a case totalling $110m.
The man in question, Abraham Yusuff, was sentenced to fourteen years for the scheme. His accomplices Meghan Inyang and Christopher Eduardo were both sentenced as co-defendants for three and two years, respectively.
According to the documentation provided to the court, from 2018 to 2021, “Yusuff led a stolen-identity-refund-fraud scheme with Eduardo and Inyang, as well as Christian Mathurin, of Nashville, Tennessee; Dillon Anozie, of San Antonio; Babajide Ogunbanjo, of Austin, Texas; and Aydin Mammadov, of Houston.”
Identity fraud ringleader sentenced
The court found that Yussuf orchestrated a webwork of contacts to defraud the IRS. He instructed the members of his group to provide addresses for him to receive mail, including IRS correspondence such as identity verification letters. Yusuff and others then masqueraded as the IRS, asking these victims to provide personal information.
Yussuf and his group were also bold enough to contact the IRS to change the taxpayers’ addresses on file and to send their tax information, including “account transcripts and wage records, to the addresses and emails the defendants controlled. Communicating over Telegram, Yusuff instructed his defendants to send him photographs of the mail the IRS had sent and then instructed them to destroy the mail.”
They filed more than 370 tax returns electronically, claiming fraudulent refunds. The group then asked the IRS to distribute the refund payments to certain credit cards and payment methods that had been set up with the victims’ compromised information.
“Stealing someone’s identity is abhorrent and despicable behavior. This week’s sentencing serves as a stark reminder that fraud and the pursuit of quick gains comes with severe consequences,” said Special Agent in Charge Christopher J. Altemus Jr. of IRS-CI Dallas Field Office.
During the sentencing, the Department of Justice provided stark victim impact statements from people who had their identities stolen by the group, including victim taxpayers and accountants. They testified to the financial harm and stress that Yusuff and his co-defendants caused them.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pittman for the Western District of Texas sentenced Yusuff to “three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay restitution and a forfeiture judgment in the amount of $30,370,365. Eduardo was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $2,823,377 in restitution to the IRS. Inyang was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $762,512 in restitution to the IRS,” said the conclusion of the Department of Justice report.
Image: Pixlr.
