Woman Sentenced To 42 Months For Fraudulent Tax Scheme

RICHMOND, Va. –Virginia Parks-Bert, 41, of Parkville, Md., was sentenced today to 42 months in prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release, and required to pay $135,835.09 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service, for participating in a scheme to defraud the United States by filing fraudulent tax returns. 

Dana J. Boente, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Thomas J. Kelly, Special Agent in Charge, Washington, D.C. Field Office, Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation; and Kathryn Keneally, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department's Tax Division, made the announcement after sentencing by United States District Judge John A. Gibney.

             Parks-Bert pled guilty on October 23, 2013, to conspiracy to defraud the government with respect to claims and aggravated identity theft.  According to court documents, from February 2010 to May 2011, Parks-Bert conspired to obtain false tax return refunds by submitting false claims for herself and other to the IRS.  Parks-Bert included false W-2 employer, wages, and tax withholding amount information on these returns.  She and her co-conspirators then directed the false refunds to be deposited into bank accounts that they controlled.  Generally, Parks-Bert purposefully kept the falsely claimed refund amounts below a certain threshold to avoid detection by the IRS.  In total, Parks-Bert filed at least 57 false federal tax returns claiming $260,270 in refunds that the named taxpayers were not entitled to claim.  Moreover, on March 31, 2010, Parks-Bert filed a tax return using the name and Social Security number of an individual whom she knew was deceased.  She directed that the falsely claimed refund of $5,404 be deposited into a bank account that she controlled.

            This case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service and Chesterfield County Police Department.  Assistant United States Attorney Erik S. Siebert and Department of Justice, Tax Division Trial Attorney and Special Assistant United States Attorney Rebecca Perlmutter prosecuted the case on behalf of the United States.

A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.justice.gov/usao/vae. Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov or on https://pcl.uscourts.gov.