California Woman Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Defraud Internal Revenue Service and Wire Fraud

Kathryn Darlene Coryell, a Fresno, California, resident, pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and wire fraud, announced Deputy Assistant Attorney General Ronald A. Cimino for the Justice Department’s Tax Division and U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag for the Northern District of California.

According to the plea agreement, beginning around Feb. 28, 2008, and continuing through April 16, 2012, Coryell and her co-conspirator Noemi Baez participated in a scheme to obtain and help others to obtain payment of false claims for refunds from the IRS by electronically filing false federal income tax returns in their own names and in the names of others. Using the names and Social Security numbers of multiple individuals, Coryell and Baez created false income information and filed with the IRS materially false tax returns claiming refunds derived from tax credits, including the Earned Income Credit, the Additional Child Tax Credit and the Making Work Pay Credit. Coryell and Baez filed more than 150 false and fraudulent claims, with false claims totaling more than $400,000. Baez pleaded guilty to conspiracy and aggravated identity theft and was sentenced on Feb. 6, 2014, to serve 30 months in prison.

At time of her sentencing on Oct. 23, 2014, before U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen, Coryell faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $500,000 or twice the gain or loss resulting from her offense, whichever is greater.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Cimino and U.S. Attorney Haag commended the efforts of the special agents of IRS – Criminal Investigation, who investigated the case, and Trial Attorneys Charles O’Reilly, Erin S. Mellen and Sonia M. Owens of the Tax Division, who are prosecuting the case.