On December 5, 2019, in the Southern District of Florida, Fort Lauderdale tax preparer Deborah Thomas was sentenced after previously pleading guilty to three counts of wire fraud in connection with a scheme to misappropriate her clients' monies, which had been intended to satisfy taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Thomas was indicted for the offenses in May 2019 and pled guilty in August 2019.

According to the indictment, from April 2015 through May 2018, Thomas worked as a tax preparer at a public accounting firm. In an effort to unjustly enrich herself, she registered Global Business Concepts, LLC (operating as U.S. Treasures). She subsequently opened a bank account in the name of that business, where she then deposited fraudulently obtained checks.

Thomas instructed some of her clients who owed money to the IRS to write checks payable to "U.S. Treasury." She then had the checks stamped or altered, making it difficult to see the last letters of the payee. Thomas instructed other clients, whose primary language was not English, to make checks payable to "U.S. Treasures" or "U.S. Treasure." Thomas did not give those client checks to the IRS but instead deposited them into her U.S. Treasures account through automated teller machines in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Images of the deposited checks were then transmitted via wire communication to servers located in Richardson, Texas, allowing them to be credited to Thomas' own business bank account. The fraudulent proceeds obtained by Thomas totaled more than $654,779.

Thomas was sentenced to 108 months in Federal prison and four years of supervised release. She was further ordered to pay over $5.1 million in restitution.

Source:  The facts in this case narrative come from the following publicly available documents: S.D. Fla. Indict. filed May 16, 2019; S.D. Fla. Plea Agr. filed Aug. 19, 2019; S.D. Fla. Crim. Docket as of Aug. 21, 2019 and S.D. Fla. Judgment filed Dec. 8, 2019.