Maryland Man Pleads Guilty in Stolen Identity Tax Refund Scheme

A Temple Hills, Maryland man pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to conspiring to file fraudulent claims for tax refunds, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and false personation, announced Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division.

According to the Indictment and information provided to the court, Anthony Ferguson participated in a stolen identity refund fraud conspiracy from January 2012 through May 2016. Ferguson and his co-conspirators obtained personal identifying information from several sources and used those identities to file tax returns and obtain fraudulent refunds from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). In 2016, Ferguson pretended to be an employee of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and sent text messages to a witness in an attempt to obtain the details of an ongoing criminal investigation into his conduct.

Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 23 before U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth. He faces a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for conspiring to file false refund claims, 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud, three years in prison for false personation and a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison for each count of aggravated identity theft. Ferguson also faces a period of supervised release, restitution and monetary penalties.

Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Goldberg commended special agents of IRS Criminal Investigation and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), who conducted the investigation, and Trial Attorneys Mark McDonald, Sean Green and Jack Morgan of the Tax Division, who are prosecuting the case.

Additional information about the Tax Division’s enforcement efforts can be found on the division’s website.