COLUMBUS, Ohio – The mastermind of a $3.5 tax fraud scheme that unraveled because the conspirators misspelled the names of common cities on forms has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Roma Sims, of Westerville, to prison for 100 months and ordered him to pay $3.5 million in restitution for committing aggravated identity theft, wire fraud and conspiracy. Sims pleaded guilty to the charges on Sept. 27, 2013.
Sims, 35, and two others were charged last year with stealing the identities of more than 500 people between 2009 and 2012 to collect tax refunds of more than $3.5 million.
Most of the stolen identities were Kentucky residents on disability or other assistance.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that the scheme unraveled when the conspirators misspelled several cities on forms that caught the attention of Internal Revenue Service investigators.
According to court documents, Sims – who operated behind fronts like Last Minute Tax, Tax USA, Simply the Best Tax Service and X-Press Taxes & Accounting Services — conspired with Samantha Towns and Robert Earthman between 2009 and January 2013 to steal personal information via Craigslist ads and government records and use the information to file false income tax returns.
Authorities say one of Sims’s schemes in March 2010 involved posting a Craigslist claiming to be a church seeking donations and asking for personal data from donors. He also placed weekly ads in cities all over the U.S. in the employment newspaper Jobs Weekly.
According to prosecutors, Sims used the information to file income tax returns containing false profit or loss from business forms and earned income tax credits, which generated bogus refunds, which were wired into bank accounts belonging to Sims and Towns.
Earthman, who worked for a vendor for Kentucky’s Department for Income Support, acquired personal identification information of single parents receiving child support, Social Security benefits, disability benefits, or other public assistance programs like Medicaid and food stamps.
Towns, 32, of Reynoldsburg, was sentenced last year to three years of probation and was ordered to pay $1.3 million in restitution.
Earthman, 32, of Lexington, was sentenced on June 19 to 24 months in prison and was ordered to pay $1.3 million in restitution