A Memphis woman was sentenced to six years in prison after she and a co-conspirator filed hundreds of false tax claims using the identities of dead people.
Cheryl Wright, 30, of Memphis was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court. Her conspirator Nakita Brooks, 31, was sentenced in July to serve 10 years. Together, they will have to pay the Internal Revenue Service back the $690,767.84 they stole from the government.
From February 2010 to November 2011, the two women filed hundreds of false tax returns using the personal identifying information (such as Social Security numbers) of dead people.
Brooks and Wright also set up phony tax return service companies. In 2010, the name of the company used to prepare the returns was Rattler’s Tax Pals. In 2011, the name of the company was Taxes Express.
The women used stolen identities as the preparers of the returns, including the identity of a nine-year-old girl from Indiana.
“Through her fraudulent tax scheme, Cheryl Wright victimized the IRS and the people whose identities she stole,” United States Attorney Edward L. Stanton III, said in a statement. “And while she may have avoided paying taxes and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in refunds she was not owed, she will now pay the ultimate price of spending the next six years in a federal prison for her criminal acts.”
