California Man Arrested for Masterminding Massive Tax Fraud Scheme
Despite the best efforts of his federal crimes lawyer, a California man is facing 20 years in federal prison for masterminding one of the biggest tax fraud schemes in history. Ronald L Brekke was convicted of conspiracy and wire fraud for helping nearly 1,000 people claim $763 million in fraudulent tax refunds. Even more astonishing, nearly 63% of those people were Canadian, not even US citizens.
Thankfully for honest taxpayers everywhere, the government only paid out about $14 million of the $763 million claimed, and will be seeking to recoup all of the monies paid out.
Brekke preyed on individuals in debt, using common scam known as a 1099 OID fraud. The general premise of the scam is to claim that the IRS had a program that offered a tax refund equivalent to an individual’s personal debt. Brekke would charge his victims a fee to file the “proper” paperwork. Shockingly, some of his victims actually got paid off by the IRS.
Sadly most didn’t, and those that did now have the IRS hounding them for the money back.
Investigators even say that Brekke held multiple seminars to try and lure in new victims and made over 0,000 from 2009 until the time of his arrest on the scam.
The walls began to crumble down on Brekke when two of his co-conspirators attempted to cash $350,000 checks at a Washington bank. That triggered suspicion, and an investigation ultimately led to Brekke.
Brekke faces up to 20 years in prison and is scheduled for sentencing in June.
