If you’re in prison and need some extra money, what should you do? How about defrauding the IRS—after all, you’re in prison, and all the government can do is keep you there.
Of course, such a scheme needs help from outsiders. It’s tough when you’re in prison to have access to your bank accounts. One such outsider will soon get to spend time at ClubFed from such a scheme.
Daniel Goodheart was a prison counselor at the Okeechobee Correctional Institute in Florida. Mr. Goodheart allegedly used a Florida Department of Corrections database to get names and social security numbers which he, and several others, used to obtain $902,000 in refunds.
But the IRS caught on to the scheme, and Mr. Goodheart was prosecuted on charges of mail fraud and wire fraud. He was found guilty in February, and was sentenced last week to five years at ClubFed. He will appeal the conviction.
Unfortunately, Mr. Goodheart isn’t the only individual who has been engaging in this kind of tax fraud. Of all fraudulent returns caught by the IRS, 15% were prison-related. And that’s just the fraudulent returns that were caught.