What the heck! Another Nigerian fraudster, with another type of scam, caught in Cobb County, Georgia just like yesterday’s Nigerian crook.
Is the Marietta area the go-to-place for Nigerians to congregate while ripping off Americans?
I’ve always wondered how scammers were able to file large numbers of fraudulent tax returns in order to obtain refund checks from some unsuspecting middle class Americans, so I found a detailed press release about the Dept. of Justice’s sentencing of OLUKAYODE IBRAHIM LAWAL very useful.
Lawal was arrested last year, but was sentenced on Tuesday in Connecticut where he stole thousands of dollars from teachers and other employees at the Groton Public School District and attempted the same for employees at the Sacred Heart Academy in Hamden.
By the way, he came here on a visitor visa and overstayed the visa!
See how he did it!
Continue reading “Nigerian to be Deported, Scammed Connecticut Educators out of their Tax Refunds”
Category: Tax fraud
Ohio 'Man' Sentenced for Allowing Criminals to Work in Home Health Care Business
Nothing annoys me more than a story like this with no photo of the convicted ‘man’ named Ali Jama.
So I’m making an educated guess that since he lives in Columbus, Ohio***, the city with the second largest Somali population in America and that the name is a common Somali name, that he is Somali!
Someone who knows Ali Jama can tell me I’m wrong. I will be waiting!
Here is a bit of the story (STL News), taken directly from the Dept. of Justice press release on this fraudster.
OHIO NEWS: COLUMBUS, ALI JAMA, COLUMBUS HOME HEALTH CARE PROVIDER SENTENCED FOR FRAUD
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The co-owner of Alpha Star Health Care Inc. was sentenced today in federal court to 18 months in prison for running home health care fraud and tax fraud schemes.
Ali Jama, 50, of Columbus, pleaded guilty in September 2018 to one count of making false health care statements and one count of making false statements to the IRS.
[….]
According to court documents, Alpha, which was located on Westerville Road in Columbus, was a Medicare and Ohio Medicaid health care provider. In 2015 and 2016, Jama improperly billed Medicare and Medicaid by allowing unqualified health care aides to provide care.
Jama billed for services by disqualified individuals, whose criminal backgrounds prohibited them from providing direct care; and billed for services by untrained home health aides.
Further, Jama provided false documents to his tax preparer, claiming $0 in taxable income for 2013 and 2014. In fact, his taxable income for those years was approximately $167,000 and $301,000 respectively. As a result, the IRS sustained a loss of approximately $126,000 in tax liability.
Continue reading for more on his tax scams. Then check this out—a bunch of verbiage about how bad his crimes were and how “just” his sentence of 18 months is!
“The public rightfully expects and trusts that those who provide health care services are competent and qualified”, said Lamont Pugh III, Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General – Chicago Region. “The utilization of unqualified personnel coupled with the billing of federally funded health care programs for their services puts a patient’s health and safety at risk, and wastes taxpayer dollars. The OIG along with our federal and state partners will continue to identify and hold accountable those who choose to engage in this type of criminal activity.”
[….]
“This is a deliberate, coldhearted violation of the public trust,” Ohio Attorney General Yost said. “This joint investigation and prosecution was equally deliberate, and the sentence is just.”
What do you think? Is 18 months behind bars “just?” And, what are the odds he will be paying restitution amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars! Maybe “just” would be deportation back to his homeland!
***If you are new to Frauds and Crooks, see (in my Welcome post) that a film being produced about the joys of diversity in Columbus, Ohio helped inspire me to undertake this new project!
Even if you are a subscriber and read my posts on your phone or in e-mails, visit occasionally (click here) for more information. For example, see “Trending” in the right hand side bar? Those are the posts that are the most popular with readers in recent days.
Minnesota: Tax Prep Fraudster Finally Caught in his Native Africa
I actually had to laugh when I saw the Associated Press story headlined:
St. Paul man sentenced for income tax preparation fraud
It is the kind of a headline I’ve joked about many times: St. Paul “man” (nothing to see, move along!). The short AP story never mentions Kenneth Mwase’s African connections and his earlier flee from justice.
Here is AP and then I’ll give you some more important facts from the US Justice Department about the gang of ‘new Americans’ and how they and their Minnesota clients defrauded us—American taxpayers.
A St. Paul man has been sentenced to about 10 years in prison for directing a fraudulent tax return preparation business.
Kenneth Mwase and four co-defendants were accused of preparing and filing more than 2,000 fraudulent individual income tax returns in 2006 through 2008. The defendants operated Primetime Tax Services, which had three storefronts in the Minneapolis area.
The 54-year-old Mwase pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, aggravated identity theft and failing to appear at sentencing. Mwase admitted overseeing a conspiracy that caused a tax loss of more than $2.5 million dollars.
What the AP isn’t telling you!
Here are some more important facts about the not-so-simple story from the Department of Justice (hat tip: Leo). Sorry this is long, but I want you to see the full story!
A Minneapolis based tax return preparer was sentenced to serve 121 months in prison today for managing and directing a fraudulent return-preparation business, Primetime Tax Services Inc.
Kenneth Mwase, who also fraudulently used the name Chatonda Khofi, 54, of St. Paul, Minnesota, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, one count of aggravated identity theft, and one count of failure to appear at sentencing.
[….]
In April 2014, the defendant was charged in a seventy-count second superseding indictment, along with codefendants Ishmael Kosh, 39, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Amadou Sangaray, 36, of New York, New York, and Francis Saygbay, 43, of Minneapolis, and David Mwangi, 47, of Arlington, Texas, for their involvement with Primetime, a tax preparation business with three storefronts in the Minneapolis area. Together with his co-defendants, Mwase prepared and filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over 2,000 fraudulent individual income tax returns on behalf of customers of Primetime for the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. Mwase and his co-defendants also prepared approximately 1,700 fraudulent state income tax returns filed with the state of Minnesota for those years.
In November 2014, Mwase plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the Government and one count of aggravated identity theft. As part of his plea agreement, Mwase admitted overseeing a conspiracy that caused a tax loss of over $2.5 million dollars. Mwase and co-defendants Kosh, Sangaray, and Saygbay established Primetime’s flagship location in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, in late 2006. They then prepared tax returns in 2007, 2008, and 2009, for Primetime’s customers, which reported false dependents, fake business income and losses, inflated deductions, inflated credits, and false filing statuses, in order to get their customers inflated refunds. The defendants maintained control over their customers’ IRS refunds by instructing that those refunds be sent directly to Primetime. They then caused their preparation fee to be directly withdrawn from the refund. When a customer came to pick up their refund check or debit card, the defendants sometimes escorted that customer to a check cashing location or ATM and demanded additional cash.
Mwase was scheduled to be sentenced on August 18, 2016, following the two-week trial of co-defendants Kosh and Sangaray, which occurred in September 2015, and the guilty plea of co-defendant Saygbay, in November 2015. However, on August 7, 2016, he fled to South Africa, using a fake identity and a fraudulently-obtained Zimbabwean passport. In April 2017, Mwase was charged with one count of failure to appear for sentencing.
With the assistance of the United States Department of State, INTERPOL, and Zimbabwean and South African authorities, Mwase was arrested in South Africa in May 2018. Over the years, Mwase used multiple fake identities, including passing himself off as Chatonda Khofi, an individual born in Washington, D.C. to diplomats from Malawi. In October 2018, following an extradition request from the United States, Mwase was surrendered to the custody of the United States Marshals Service and returned to Minnesota to face sentencing. On November 16, 2018, Mwase pled guilty to the charge of failing to appear for sentencing. Mwase’s co-conspirators were previously sentenced to prison.
So typical!
A little more to the story than the AP wants to give you and I suspect that is because this bunch are immigrants, maybe even illegal immigrants, and the real story does not further the mainstream media’s pre-approved portrayal of “new Americans.”
And, by the way, every one of Mwase’s clients is as guilty as he is! So when are the feds going to track down the 2,000 or more Minnesota customers who went along with the scheme?
Endnote: As I continue to build an archive of stories here, note the tags at the bottom. I am tagging stories by state (if that applies), so you will have ready access to information on frauds and crooks in your state!