You can't keep a good man down, the saying goes. The same could be said, it seems, of a man who may be less than good.
Donald W. Sanders, 46, of St. Louis went to prison in 1979 for burglary and later did time for robbery, too. In 1992, he was convicted of criminal possession of a weapon and sent back to prison.
And now he is accused of breaking the law while serving time in the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center in Pacific. While in prison in 2002, a federal indictment says, he used a copying machine and correction fluid to create 66 bogus tax refund claims and file them with the Internal Revenue Service.
To make the bogus documents, he doctored legitimate W-2 forms that he obtained from inmates who had worked at Steak 'n Shake and other businesses, the indictment alleges.
Sanders was indicted Aug. 26 by a federal grand jury in St. Louis on 66 counts of preparing and filing false income tax refund claims.
Sanders, who was released from prison in November, is wanted for arrest, said assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Schelp.
John Fougere, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said state prisons regularly give inmates access to copying machines so they can make copies of legal documents.
The same is true of the correction fluid, he said. "If that's part of using a typewriter, yeah, that's something you would need."
An internal Corrections Department investigation uncovered the alleged scheme, Fougere said.
From February to June 2002, Sanders used the copier to enlarge the three legitimate W-2 forms, and the correction fluid and a typewriter to insert false information, the indictment says. He then allegedly used the copier to reduce the size of the altered W-2 forms.
In all, he created bogus tax refund claims for himself and 65 other inmates, ranging from $454 to $1,867.52 each, the indictment says. Prosecutors estimate the cost to taxpayers at $73,352.14.