Back in April I reported on Martha Vernon and her daughter Tiffany Dunbar. The team engaged in perhaps the stupidest Bozo scheme a tax preparer could: They stole names and social security numbers from her employer, invented a phony W-2 for each individual, prepared a tax return which, of course, showed that the individual would receive a refund. Did I mention they had the refunds direct deposited into their own bank accounts? Given that these individuals would inevitably submit their own tax returns it was impossible for the IRS not to discover this scheme.
They received $188,931 in refunds before the IRS discovered their scheme. The pair pleaded guilty back in April and were sentenced yesterday—Ms. Vernon received 40 months at ClubFed while her daughter, Ms. Dunbar, got 33 months at ClubFed.
There’s only one more item to go with this story. Ms. Vernon’s attorney, Lora Collins, told the judge that her client was told how to conduct the scheme by a former prison inmate who she had gotten involved with. I wonder if Ms. Vernon asked that man what he was in prison for…but I suspect that sort of question never occurs to the Bozo brain.