A resident of Newnan, Georgia, was sentenced today to prison for her role as the ringleader of a $24 million stolen identity tax refund fraud (SIRF) conspiracy, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Caroline D. Ciraolo of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and U.S. Attorney George L. Beck Jr. of the Middle District of Alabama.
Keisha Lanier was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Kristi K. DuBose of the Southern District of Alabama to serve 15 years in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $5,811,406. She was also detained following the sentencing hearing. On May 19, Tamika Floyd, a defendant in a related case, was sentenced to serve 87 months in prison. On June 25, Tamaica Hoskins, a co-defendant charged in the same indictment, was sentenced to serve 145 months in prison. …
According to information in court documents and at the sentencing hearings, between January 2011 and December 2013, Lanier and Tracy Mitchell led a large-scale identity theft ring in which Lanier, Tracy Mitchell and their co-defendants filed more than 9,000 false individual federal income tax returns that claimed more than $24 million in fraudulent claims for tax refunds. The IRS paid out close to $10 million in refunds on these fraudulent claims. The defendants obtained the stolen identities from various sources, including from the U.S. Army, several Alabama state agencies, a Georgia call center and employee records from a Georgia company. Mitchell worked at the hospital located at Fort Benning, Georgia, where she had access to the identification data of military personnel, including soldiers who were deployed to Afghanistan. She stole the personal information of soldiers and used that information to file false tax returns.