Two former bank employees have been sentenced in Atlanta for their roles in a scheme that sought more than $2.8 million in fraudulent tax refunds.
Jeoffrey Jenkins and Vaughn Chambers were trusted insiders who abused their roles to commit crimes and “victimize innocent taxpayers for their own personal gain,” U.S. Attorney John Horn said in a media release Wednesday.
Authorities said Jenkins and Chambers opened numerous bank accounts using stolen personal identification information from at least February 2013 to at least March 2014. Those accounts then were listed in more than 2,000 fraudulent tax returns filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
The former bank employees intended to steal tax payers’ tax returns, depositing the fraudulent returns into the fraudulently opened bank accounts, authorities said.
A SunTrust Bank investigator told law enforcement Chambers was associated with anomalous banking activity, which led investigators to discover the scheme, according to the release.
About $500,000 was actually deposited into the account by the IRS.
Jenkins, who authorities said recruited Chambers into the scheme, received a six-year prison term and was ordered to pay $570,034 in restitution. Chambers received two years in prison and must pay $9,464 in restitution. Both men also will serve three years of supervised release when their prison terms end.
“This case is one more unfortunate example of the growing problem of stolen identity tax-return fraud,” Horn said.
