OAKLAND - Jeremy Orr pleaded guilty today in federal court in Oakland to wire fraud, announced United States Attorney David L. Anderson and Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), Special Agent in Charge Kareem Carter. The plea was accepted by the Honorable Jeffrey S. White, U.S. District Judge.
According to his guilty plea, Orr, 36, of Richmond, Calif., admitted he devised a scheme to attempt to defraud the IRS of hundreds of thousands of dollars by filing false federal income tax returns. Orr obtained the personal identification information of individuals in and around the Bay Area and prepared false 2011 federal income tax returns in the names of those individuals. The false tax returns reported false wages, false education expenses, or both, which generated a fraudulent income tax refund. Orr electronically filed more than 200 false tax returns with the IRS resulting in claimed fraudulent tax refunds in the amount of $335,142.
A federal grand jury indicted Orr on Jan. 15, 2015, charging him with four counts of wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343, and four counts of aggravated identity theft, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1028A. Today, Orr pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. If Orr complies with the plea agreement, the remaining counts will be dismissed at sentencing.
Orr has been in federal custody since his arrest in May of 2018. Judge White scheduled Orr’s sentencing hearing for May 28, 2019. The maximum statutory penalty for wire fraud is 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, however, any sentence will be imposed by the court only after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.
Assistant U.S. Attorney José A. Olivera is prosecuting the case with the assistance of Larry Garland and Kathy Tat. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the IRS-CI.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
