On September 11, 2019, in the District of Nevada, a superseding indictment was filed charging King Isaac Umoren with wire fraud, impersonating a Federal agent, aggravated identity theft, aiding and abetting, and the preparation of false tax returns, as part of a scheme for Umoren to obtain money from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by filing false tax returns claiming fraudulently inflated refunds paid through a Refund Advantage program.

According to court documents, Umoren owned and operated a tax preparation business called Universal Tax Services (UTS), which had offices in Las Vegas, Nevada. UTS offered retail tax preparation services from at least 2013 through 2016, and Umoren usually charged his clients a return preparation fee ranging from $250 to $500. Umoren required clients to electronically sign agreements related to their returns, which allowed him to fraudulently collect additional money from their tax refunds. Umoren did not tell his clients he was collecting additional money from their tax refunds ranging from $700 to $1,100.

The tax returns Umoren filed for his clients contained false statements and deductions designed to obtain the largest possible tax refund, and he concealed from the clients the false nature of the filed returns. Umoren electronically filed his clients’ tax returns from his offices in Las Vegas, Nevada, to IRS Processing Centers outside the state of Nevada. He also used the names and Preparer Tax Identification Numbers (PTINS) of former UTS employees without their knowledge or consent to file the fraudulent returns with the IRS. PTINS are issued by the IRS and are usually placed in the paid preparer section of a tax return that is prepared for compensation.

The IRS processed the fraudulent returns and, at Umoren’s direction, transferred the refunds to Refund Advantage, a third-party entity that established temporary bank accounts for tax preparers to receive a client’s refund, and Umoren then caused Refund Advantage to transfer the portion of additional money he collected from his clients’ refunds to a bank account under his control. Umoren fraudulently obtained at least $134,405.14 from his scheme.

In addition, Umoren also falsely represented himself to be an agent of the U.S. Government and detained a victim and others, and attempted to arrest and search the residence of a victim.

If convicted, Umoren could face a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment for the false return charges, 20 years’ imprisonment for each of the wire fraud counts, three years’ imprisonment for the impersonation charge, and a mandatory statutory sentence of two years’ imprisonment for the aggravated identity theft counts.

Source:  The facts in this case narrative come from the following publicly available documents: D. Nev. Superseding Indict. filed Sept. 11, 2019.