This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
An IRS employee who assisted taxpayers with problems resulting from identity theft — and had worked in taxpayer advocate offices that included Salt Lake City — has been accused of running her own refund scam using the personal information of others.
The employee, Nakeisha Hall, and two of her acquaintances were indicted earlier this month on charges that they participated in a scheme operated out of Alabama involving more than $1 million in false claims. Their alleged crimes took place from 2008 to 2011, when Hall was an Internal Revenue Service employee in the Taxpayer Advocate Service office in Birmingham.
After leaving the Birmingham position in November 2011, Hall worked in taxpayer advocate offices in Omaha, New Orleans and Salt Lake City, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Alabama.
Hall, 39, was arrested in Holly Springs, Miss., on Tuesday. One of her co-defendants, Jimmie Goodman, was arrested in Birmingham and the other, Abdulla Coleman — also known as Abdullah Coleman, Julius Dawson and Rafael Dawson — was in state custody in Wisconsin on unrelated charges, prosecutors say.
A federal indictment, which was returned Dec. 15 and unsealed Tuesday, charges the three with conspiring to commit bank fraud and mail fraud affecting a financial institution. In addition, Hall is charged with one count each of theft of government funds, aggravated identity theft and unauthorized access to a protected computer.
According to the indictment, Hall obtained names, birth dates and Social Security numbers through unauthorized access to IRS computers and used the information to prepare fraudulent income tax returns. She asked that the refunds be paid onto debit cards and had those cards sent to drop addresses, the indictment alleges.
Goodman, Coleman and others allegedly collected the refund cards from the mail. Hall activated the cards by using stolen identity information, the indictment says.
The conspiracy charge carries a maximum punishment of 30 years in prison. Other maximums are 10 years in prison for theft of government funds, a mandatory two years for aggravated identity theft and five years for unauthorized access to a protected computer.
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