LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Two brothers from Woodland Hills who ran a stolen tax refund check scheme involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulently obtained payments are expected to be sentenced in October.
Victor A. Ohiri, 55, and Stephen O. Danielson-Ohiri, 54, were found guilty late Wednesday of one count of conspiracy and 10 counts of theft of government property, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Evidence presented at their two-day retrial in downtown Los Angeles showed that from March 2014 to March 2015, Victor and Stephen Ohiri, together with others in the United Kingdom, conspired to use the Ohiris' U.S.-based bank accounts to fraudulently obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal income tax refunds.
The co-conspirators filed nearly 20 fraudulent federal income tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service in the names of victim-taxpayers whose identities they had stolen. They used fake documents, such as bogus Forms W-2, to file the fraudulent returns, which requested large tax refunds, often between $8,000 and $10,000, federal prosecutors said.
Based on the bogus returns, the IRS issued tax refunds, which were electronically transmitted not to the victim-taxpayers whose identities had been stolen, but instead to bank accounts controlled by Victor and Stephen Ohiri. The Ohiris then wired the majority of those refund proceeds to co- conspirators in the United Kingdom, and they withdrew the rest in cash for themselves.
During the conspiracy, about $340,000 in federal income tax refunds was deposited into accounts controlled by the Ohiris.
IRS investigators seized roughly $181,000 from two of Stephen Ohiri's accounts -- money that came from just one of the fraudulently obtained tax refunds, prosecutors said.
U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson scheduled an Oct. 2 sentencing hearing, at which time Victor Ohiri and Stephen Ohiri will face potential maximum sentences, respectively, of 115 years and 60 years in federal prison, prosecutors noted.
A mistrial was declared in the brothers' first trial in March 2022. Afterwards, Wilson threw out international money laundering counts, and a portion of the conspiracy count that referred to international money laundering, due to insufficient evidence, court records show.
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok
