United States Attorney Brendan V. Johnson announced that a Tampa, Florida, man convicted of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States and Aggravated Identity Theft was sentenced on Jan. 17, 2014, by U.S. District Judge Karen E. Schreier.
Charlie Frank Adams, age 23, was sentenced to 30 months in prison on the conspiracy charge and 24 months on the ID theft charge, to be served consecutively. Upon release from prison, he will be on supervised release for 3 years. Adams was also ordered to make restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and ID theft victims in the total amount of $421,832.83.
Adams and 10 others were indicted on the above charges by a federal grand jury on May 8, 2013. Adams pled guilty on Oct. 29, 2013.
Several of Adams’ co-defendants attended the University of South Dakota in Vermillion and are former members of the football team.
Adams was involved in a scheme to defraud the United States by using personal identifying information, including names, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth of other individuals to file bogus income tax returns showing tax refunds due. The requested refunds total approximately $1 million, and the IRS paid fraudulent claims of over $400,000 before the fraud was discovered.
As his part in the conspiracy, Adams filed bogus tax returns using stolen identifying information received from a co-conspirator, kept the co-conspirator informed as to whether the returns were accepted by the IRS and, if so, to which address the refunds would be mailed. He also provided stolen identifying information to his co-conspirators.
This case was investigated by the Vermillion Police Department, the South Dakota Division of Criminal Assistance, and the IRS Criminal Investigation Division. Assistant U.S. Attorney John E. Haak prosecuted the case.
Adams was immediately turned over to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
