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Inmates charged in tax scam |
By Rocky Mountain News |
Published: 08/25/2003 |
Two Colorado inmates have been accused of collecting more than $20,000 of income tax refunds by filing fake tax returns from prison. A federal grand jury in Denver indicted Wendel Robert Wardell Jr., 36, and Carl William Pursley Jr., 35, on Wednesday. Wardell is an inmate at the Trinidad Correctional Facility, and Pursley is at the Limon Correctional Facility. The two met in the late 1990s at the Centennial Correctional Facility. Pursley is serving time for murdering a woman in El Paso County. Wardell is in prison for a check fraud in Larimer County. The indictment said the two men and others who aren't named prepared false federal tax returns for the years 1995, 1996 and 1997. They claimed to be employed by real companies, but their salaries, numbers of dependents, amounts of taxes withheld and other information were false. They even had fake W-2 forms, the indictment said. Some of the returns were in the names of other inmates, it said. Wardell allegedly mailed the false returns and supporting documents to 'third parties,' not named, who mailed the returns to the Internal Revenue Service. The two inmates put their refunds in their savings accounts at Armed Forces Bank in Fort Carson. They applied for refunds of more than $70,000, but were caught by the IRS and Colorado prison officials before they collected that much. Wardell is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements in tax returns and aiding and abetting the preparation of false tax returns. Pursley is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and aiding and abetting the preparation of false tax returns. |
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
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It is difficult to know if the number of inmate tax fraud scams has gone up, or if the IRS has just become better able to weed them out. Recent laws require that inmate information be shared between federal and state prison systems. The IRS now maintains a master file of prison inmates across the nation. You can check more info here.