Lavish Lifestyle, Overconfidence of Tax Frauds & the Prison

Last updated on February 13, 2013

“The queen of the IRS tax fraud,” Rashia Wilson, was found to have filed 220 false tax returns during 2009 to 2012. She received $1.3 million in false refunds from the IRS. With time, she grew so confident that she even posted a picture of herself on Facebook with bundles of cash and brazenly called herself “the queen of IRS tax fraud”.

She drove an Audi, wore diamonds and designer clothes, and had bundles of cash in her home. When investigators searched her home, they found designer sunglasses, bags and shoes from Gucci, Calvin Klein, Fendi and other top brands. They also found evidence of tax fraud, including nine computers, four wireless Internet hot spot devices, four cell phones, debit cards, medical records, ledgers with personal information of thousands of people, bundles of cash, and a handgun.

Wilson is currently facing 57 federal charges related to tax fraud, and has pleaded guilty to a federal weapons offense related to the gun seized from her home.

Wilson isn’t the only person to conduct a tax fraud scheme, nor will she be the last. However, the biggest tax schemes seem to be conducted by tax companies looking to take advantage of vulnerable taxpayers in need of help.

American Tax Relief was a tax relief company shut down by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after their multi-million dollar tax scam was busted. The husband-and-wife owners of the company, Alexander Seung Hahn and Joo Hyun Park, lived in multimillion-dollar homes, had seven luxury cars, while duping taxpayers who hired their firm for tax help.

“They strung people along, pushed them deeper into a financial hole,” David C. Vladeck, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in Chicago on Wednesday. “The game is over. They’ve been shut down.”

Whether it is Wilson, Hahn or Deutch, tax frauds’ game gets over sooner or later, and they find that the luxury they enjoyed and courted was short-lived.