Today, United States District Court Judge Harvey Bartle, III sentenced Gebah Kamara, 50, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, to 30 months’ imprisonment for conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service, aiding and abetting the preparation of false federal income tax returns, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. The charges arose from the defendant’s participation in a conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS") by filing false federal income tax returns, which generated large fraudulent refunds. The defendant, a former social worker, stole the personal identity information of foster children from his employer, and sold that information to tax preparers in Philadelphia to use as fraudulent dependents on income tax returns, announced Acting United States Attorney Louis D. Lappen. The defendant pled guilty to the charges on Dec. 3, 2014.
From 2007 through approximately October 2011, defendant Gebah Kamara was employed as a social worker with Catholic Social Services in Philadelphia. During the course of his employment, the defendant had access to the names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers of foster children and members of the children’s foster families. Beginning In or about 2008, the defendant sold the personal identity information of children for use as false dependents on income tax returns to his codefendants, who operated Medmans Financial Services, a tax preparation business.
Kamara’s codefendants used the children’s personal identity information to create fraudulent dependents on income tax returns, which they prepared for clients and filed with the IRS. By including the false dependents on tax returns, the tax preparers falsely claimed on behalf of their clients a tax exemption for each dependent, and the child tax credit, and often claimed a tax credit for child, dependent care expenses, and the earned income tax credit. These false items generated large fraudulent tax refunds, some in excess of $9,000 per return.
The tax preparers charged clients an additional fee of as much as $800 for fraudulently including a dependent on an income tax return. The defendant was paid approximately $200 to $300 for each child’s identity that was included on an income tax return that was accepted by the IRS for processing.
In addition to providing personal identity information of children to his codefendants to use as false dependents, the defendant also gave them a template that could be used to generate false letters for clients in case of an IRS audit.
For the tax years 2007 through 2010, 283 false tax returns were filed, using 321 foster children's identities that had been provided by Kamara, causing a tax loss of approximately $1,191,093.72.
This case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Division, the City of Philadelphia Office of the Inspector General, and the Social Security Administration OIG- Office of Investigations, and was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Frank Costello.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
