14 DAY TRIAL // Kamarian D. Millender, who worked as a lab technician at a medical facility in Dothan, Alabama, pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated identity theft on Tuesday, July 8.
He used personal information from patients’ medical records to file false tax returns and thus obtained tax fraudulent returns from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
The investigation revealed that Millender filed more than 100 false federal tax returns, which impacted a number of 73 individuals. It appears that the potential of the fraud was estimated at about $536,000 / €393,000.
However, the service managed to prevent the payment of most of the refunds, and the total value cashed by the fraudster amounted to about $19,000 / €14,000.
There is no information if the personal information of the patients reached the cybercrime groups, which could spell more trouble for them.
Because he chose to plead guilty to the charge, Millender will not receive the maximum sentence but the statutory mandatory, which means one or two years of jail time. Apart from this, he could be asked to pay a fine as large as $250,000 / €183,500.
Identity thieves use personal identification details to file for fake tax returns. According to numbers from the IRS, the amount of theft-related criminal investigations went up by 66% in 2013. All a fraudster needs to cash someone else’s tax refund is their social security number.