Dallas: A Zimbabwean man has been sentenced to five and a half years in the United States for near U.S $2 million tax fraud.
U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade sentenced Campion Takura Mugweni to 66 months and ordered him to pay $1,965,637 in restitution.
Mugweni will be deported after serving his sentence.
Reports said in addition and as part of the Government’s agreement with Mugweni, he must forfeit the more than $40,000 in funds seized during an execution of a search warrant in April 2007 and funds IRS-CI seized from his bank accounts.
According to the factual resume filed in the case, Mugweni admitted that from October 2006 until April 2007 that he schemed with others to prepare and electronically file fraudulent income tax returns by using personal identification information without authorization, and then used those fraudulent tax returns, which showed that refunds were owed to the taxpayers, as a basis for obtaining fraudulent refund anticipation loans from banks.
Court documents further state that beginning in January 2007, Mugweni and his coconspirators prepared and began filing the fraudulent returns and then used the fraudulent returns as a basis for obtaining refund anticipation loans from federally insured banks, including HSBC Bank USA, N.A. and Santa Barbara Bank and Trust, a subsidiary of Pacific Capital Bank, N.A. Mugweni gave the checks to coconspirators who cashed the checks in Fort Worth. Mugweni shared in the cash proceeds and other proceeds of his scheme and admitted that he personally received at least $40,000 in cash as a result of his fraudulent scheme.
