A Barbadian immigrant faces more than two dozen charges of defrauding the U.S. government of at least US$10 million by filing hundreds of false tax returns, U.S. prosecutors said late yesterday.
The U.S. Attorney’s office has alleged that Andrew J. Watts, 34, who has lived in several American cities but whose last known address was Newark, New Jersey, claimed more than US$120 million in tax refunds over the last four years.
Watts pleaded not guilty Wednesday when he faced U.S. District Judge Joan Gottschall, who ordered that he remain in federal custody without bond. He is expected to return to federal court for a preliminary hearing on August 10.
A permanent resident of the United States who had previously lived in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, California, Watts was arrested on April 29 in Kansas City, Missouri, and returned to Chicago while a federal grand jury investigated the case, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Watts submitted more than 470 bogus returns using the names and social security numbers of dead taxpayers, prosecutors alleged. They claimed he created his own fake income tax return forms, which he signed, falsely claiming to be the dead taxpayers’ authorized representative. He also forged the taxpayers’ signatures to the returns and falsely represented that the dead people were still living, prosecutors added.
They said that Watts then directed refunds to be sent to addresses and bank accounts he controlled, including a bank account and address in Chicago, where the indictments were laid.
Watts faces 27 federal charges, including 14 counts of filing false income tax claims, nine counts of aggravated identity theft and four counts of mail fraud, the government said. In addition, the government is seeking to forfeit at least US$10 million in Watts’s assets.
Watts faces up to 20 years in prison for each count of mail fraud; five years maximum for each false claims charge and up two years each for aggravated identity theft. If convicted, the terms may run concurrently to each other but must be served in addition to the sentence impose for the other crimes. In addition, there is a maximum fine of 250,000 dollars for each count and the mail fraud counts carry an alternative maximum fine of twice the convicted person’s gain or twice the loss, whichever is greater, the prosecutors’ statement said.(CMC)
