On June 30, 2017, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas announced the sentencing of two men convicted of conspiring to claim up to $1.8 million in fraudulent income tax refunds from the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) using stolen personal information of numerous taxpayers. Jeffery Wahab Jubril and Sunday Quincy Usoh received 52- and 96-month sentences, respectively, and both will serve three (3) years of supervised release upon completion of their prison terms. The pair must also collectively pay more than $265,000 in restitution.

According to a criminal complaint filed against Jubril in May 2015, the scheme centered around stolen identity refund fraud (“SIRF”), which involves “theft of individual taxpayers’ identities; preparation of income tax returns that falsely purport to belong to those taxpayers; and filing of the false returns with the IRS in order to obtain tax refunds.” The complaint detailed how Jubril opened accounts at numerous banks throughout Texas, used stolen personal information of victims (including names, Social Security numbers, and birthdates) to file electronic tax returns with the IRS, and then directed tax refunds to his various bank accounts. An indictment against Jubril was filed in June 2015 charging him with theft of government money and aggravated identity theft, and a superseding indictment was filed in November 2015 adding Usoh as a co-defendant as well as a charge for conspiracy to defraud the government. Both defendants ultimately pleaded guilty in May 2016.

In the Department of Justice’s press release regarding the defendants’ sentencing, Special Agent in Charge Rick Goss of IRS Criminal Investigation unit credited the government’s use of “special investigative techniques to follow a crimes’ money trail . . . back to the perpetrator.” The IRS Criminal Investigation unit conducts initial investigations into tax refund fraud to gather evidence and then recommends prosecution to United States Attorney’s Offices nationwide. IRS statistics show that in 2015—the year Jubril and Usoh were investigated and indicted—the IRS initiated a total of 776 identity theft investigations, resulting in 790 individuals being sentenced to an average of 38 months of jail time. In 2016, the number of investigations initiated and individuals sentenced decreased slightly to 673 and 613, respectively, while the average sentence increased to 40 months.