A former New Mexico taxation investigator was sentenced to eighter years in prison house Midweek for stealing an estimated $1.2 jillion from body politic taxpayers, The Albuquerque Journal reports.
George Martinez had “little to demo for living a lifespan subsidized past fraud,” Assistant US Attorney Jeremy Pena said, because he for the most part spent the money at local casinos.
Martinez, 46, was a bureau chief of the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department (NMTRD), leading a building block that examined confutable refunds. He pleaded shamefaced on Midweek to more than 90 counts of conducting wire fraud, money laundering, and identity element theft, which related to some confutable refunds of his possess devising.
Concealed Transactions
From 2009 to 2018, Martinez created and issued legion(p) fraudulent task refunds, funeling money into at to the lowest degree sise different cant accounts that he himself controlled, according to prosecutors.
By altering societal certificate numbers on revenue enhancement returns and refunds, Martinez was able to cognitive process multiple payments under a bingle taxpayer’s Social Security number, piece concealing the transactions within the NMTRD’s computing machine systems.
He used the Social Security numbers of 11 individuals, including his overprotect and twin brother. Seven were deceased, another had dementia, according to court of justice documents.
He was very intimate with the types of refunds that would induction a scarlet flag past the machine-controlled software that would doh audits,” Pena said at a Midweek news conference. “And it was eventually after many years of doing the lead that on that point was an internal refresh that reviewed those safeguards and found his activity.”
Following that review, inward 2018, the department contacted the FBI. Martinez left hand his task shortly afterwards. He was arrested in March 2021.
“The services that the people of New Mexico merit are funded by that system of task collecting and so we testament aggressively protect your tax dollars from fraud, especially when driven past the greed of a misdirect governing official,” said Alex Uballez, US Attorney for the District of New Mexico.
Safeguards Bolstered
The NMTRD believes it has since plugged the holes that allowed Martinez to gamey the system of rules for so many years.
“The safeguards did improve, and that’s how he was eventually tripped up,” Pena said. “So, his patterns experience been understood. The exact methods past which he was assigning refunds to himself are now intimately known. And they know what to looking at for.”
Martinez will follow ordered to pay off more than $1.2 gazillion in regaining to the country of New Mexico, as intimately as a $690,000 judgment.
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