St. Louis Woman Indicted for Tax Scheme to Obtain "Free Money"

A Missouri woman was indicted by a federal grand jury on April 7, 2015, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, Stephen R. Wigginton, announced today.

Ebonyi Blakely, 28, of St. Ann, Missouri, was charged in a lengthy indictment that alleges Blakely conspired with and assisted a dishonest tax preparer who filed false tax returns to claim inflated refundable tax credits for low-income tax filers.

The indictment charges Blakely with conspiracy to obstruct or impair the Internal Revenue Service in the lawful assessment and collection of income taxes and distribution of tax refunds.

The scheme to defraud was described as an ongoing federal income tax refund scheme where Blakely

recruited individuals to have their returns prepared by a dishonest tax preparer. The indictment also alleges that Blakely had her own federal income tax return prepared by the dishonest tax preparer who prepared fraudulent income tax returns for individual tax filers in order to generate "refundable tax credits," such as the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit, which were refunded to the filer. The false information contained in the income tax returns prevented the IRS from making an accurate ascertainment, computation, and assessment of tax liabilities. It also prevented the IRS from making a correct distribution of income tax refunds. The false tax returns generated a larger tax refund than the filer was entitled to receive.

Conspiracy is punishable by not more than 5 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and not more than 3 years of supervised release.

The investigation is being conducted by agents from the Internal Revenue Service / Criminal Investigations. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Norman R. Smith.

An indictment is a formal charge against a defendant. Under the law, a defendant is presumed to be innocent of a charge until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of a jury.