Simpsonville Woman Sentenced to Federal Prison for Attempting to Steal Eleven Million Dollars from Internal Revenue Service

Columbia, South Carolina –------- United States Attorney Beth Drake, announced that Stephanie Lake Meyer, age 46, of Simpsonville, South Carolina, was sentenced today to serve 36 months in federal prison for Interference with the Administration of the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 7212.  The sentence was imposed by United States District Judge Timothy M. Cain who also directed that Meyer be placed on supervised release for one year once released from prison and to pay restitution in the amount of $256,938.04.

Meyer entered a plea of guilty before Judge Cain on November 30, 2016.  At that hearing the Judge was advised of the following facts.  Meyer devised and executed a scheme to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).  In this scheme Meyer sent approximately 45 checks totaling approximately Eleven Million Dollars to the IRS.  Each of these checks were noted by Meyer as being payment of income taxes.  As the checks were received they were credited to Meyer’s IRS account.  The IRS then checked and determined that Meyer had no tax liability.  There being no tax liability, the IRS refunded monies to Meyer to account for the “overage” that she had sent in.

After some $256,938.04 was sent to Meyer, the IRS discovered that all of the checks that Meyer had sent in were bogus and that she was running what is commonly known as a “phantom account balance scheme”.  This is a scheme normally seen with bank accounts where an account holder deposits worthless checks to build up the balance and then draws it down before the bogus nature of the checks is discovered.

U.S. Attorney Drake stated that agents of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division had investigated the case and that Assistant United States Attorney David C. Stephens of the Greenville Office was in charge of the prosecution.

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