Harrisburg Woman Sentenced To Prison For Making False Claims To The IRS

     The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that Stephanie A. Metz, age 25, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to serve a year in prison and pay $57,216.22 to the IRS for her role in a conspiracy to submit 33 fraudulent income tax returns to the IRS requesting $242,095 in fraudulent tax refunds for the years 2010 and 2011.  U.S. District Court Judge Yvette Kane ordered that Metz surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on August 25, 2014 to commence serving her sentence.

     According to U.S. Attorney Peter Smith, Metz provided a co-conspirator with addresses where the fraudulent income tax refund checks could be delivered by mail and was paid a fee for each refund check she delivered to her co-conspirator.  For the tax years 2010 and 2011, Metz provided addresses for 33 fraudulent income tax returns requesting $242,095 in fraudulent tax refunds.  The IRS paid out $57,216 to the co-conspirator before the scheme was detected in early 2012.

     The investigation is part of a project known as Operation Mass Mail involving the filing of hundreds of thousands of false returns using stolen identity information of residents of Puerto Rico.  The investigation was conducted by the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS and is assigned to Senior Litigation Counsel Bruce Brandler.