Maryland Tax Defier Sentenced to 65 Months in Prison

Andrew Isaac Chance of Clinton, Md., was sentenced Wednesday to 65 months in prison for filing false claims for tax refunds and for filing a false retaliatory lien against a federal prosecutor. The sentencing was announced today by the Justice Department, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

Chance was convicted by a federal jury in Greenbelt, Md., on Nov. 18, 2011. At the time the defendant filed the false retaliatory lien and false claims for tax refunds, he was on federal supervised release for a 2007 tax conviction.

According to evidence presented at trial, Chance was convicted and sentenced to 27 months in prison in 2007, for filing a false claim for an income tax refund for the tax year 2005. Shortly after he was released from prison for that crime, he filed a UCC Financing Statement with the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation, falsely claiming that the federal prosecutor, who prosecuted the 2007 case, owed him $1.313 billion. The evidence showed that Chance filed a similar lien against a Maryland state prosecutor for her role in prosecuting him for crimes relating to his attempts to cash the fraudulently obtained U.S. Treasury check for the 2005 tax return. According to the evidence, when arrested in December 2010, Chance admitted to a federal agent that he had filed the liens because the prosecutors had “done him wrong.”

The evidence at trial established that a year after filing the false lien, Chance filed three false claims for tax refunds for tax years 2007, 2008 and 2009, seeking a total of $900,000. These three false tax returns were almost identical to the 2005 return for which he was previously convicted. On the 2005 tax return, Chance claimed he was the Andrew Chance Trust. On the 2007-2009 returns, he claimed he was the Andrew I Chance Trust.

On each return in the current case, Chance claimed $300,000 in refunds based on completely false income and withholding amounts. The government introduced evidence that, despite having claimed withholdings on the false returns, Chance had no withholdings and, in fact, had demanded that the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, from which he retired as a station manager in 1999, not withhold taxes from his retirement pay.

“ Those who file false tax returns cheat not only the government but also their fellow taxpayers. This sentence shows that filing false tax returns and retaliating against federal prosecutors and other government officials, who are simply doing their jobs, will not be tolerated,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General John A. DiCicco of the Justice Department’s Tax Division.

Chance still faces a federal violation of supervised release hearing as well as a state court action for a violation of probation related to his use of false identification in an attempt to cash the fraudulent refund check he received for the 2005 tax return.

The case was prosecuted by Tax Division Trial Attorneys Jen E. Ihlo and Erin Pulice and investigated by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

More information about the Tax Division and its tax defier enforcement efforts can be found at www.justice.gov.tax.