User:Sutler/Sandbox2

__NOINDEX__ Between 1989 and 2007, the government of Washington, D.C. was embezzled over US$48 million in property tax refunds by government employee Harriette Walters and several co-conspirators. Walters was the manager of the Real Property Tax Administration Adjustments Unit who created false checks for tax refunds and bribed bank tellers to cash and deposit the amounts into accounts that did not match the checks' payees. The co-conspirators transferred part of the money to Walters. The tax scam was discovered when the firing of a bank manager required Walters to change tactics. The change led to difficulty in passing off a fictional company as valid so a corporate deposit could be released into a co-conspirator's account. The bank reported the suspicious activity, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered the tax scam and prosecuted and sentenced eleven people, including Walters, for their various roles in the embezzlement.

Conspirators
Harriette Walters was the primary figure in the tax scam. In the 1970s, before she was employed by the Washington, D.C. government, she worked as a restaurant cook. In 1981, she was hired as an accounting technician in the Real Property Division of the Department of Finance and Revenue. (The division later became the Ofﬁce of Tax and Revenue.) Though she began embezzling shortly after, investigators only recovered records of embezzlement from 1989 onward. In 2001, Walters was promoted to manager of the Adjustment Unit in the Assessment Services Division. Walters collaborated with a group of accomplices, including three family members: her brother, her niece, and her nephew.

Background
Harriette Walters and ten of her accomplices were prosecuted for embezzling $48,115,450.89 from the government of Washington, D.C. between 1989 and 2007. Officials said it was "the largest and longest-running embezzlement scheme in the city's history". During the time frame, Walters generated 236 fraudulent checks. Several checks were over $300,000 with the largest in the amount of $543,423.50, generated in 1997. With her share of the stolen money, Walters bought five homes: two in Washington, D.C., two in New Jersey, and one in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She bought a 2006 Mercedes-Benz and shopped extensively at Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus. She befriended a Louis Vuitton purse seller who became her personal shopper at Neiman Marcus. Walters also financed a vacation to Paris with family and friends as well as gambling trips to Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

When Walters started working for the government, she caught a co-worker stealing refund payment checks that were returned because the taxpayers were deceased. She and her co-worker collaborated to steal more checks and cash them at check-cashing stores. To further their scheme, they generated fake residential property tax refund checks. Walters forged requests by preparing fake documentation from law firms and mortgage companies. After her supervisor approved the forms, Walters changed the requests' identification from the firms and companies to one of her accomplices. The requests were then sent to the Revenue Accounting Administration ofﬁce with the specification that the checks were to be picked up. Walters then picked up the checks personally and had them cashed. During the 1980s, she generated numerous checks in amounts of between $800 and $3,000, though lack of records excluded the sum from the $48 million figure used in the criminal trial.

Investigators determined the earliest fraudulent refund payment processed by Walters to be in 1989, when she generated a check in the amount of $4,060 to an accomplice. A few years later, Walters determined she could process larger refunds through commercial properties instead of residential properties with no added risk of discovery. As she expanded her scam, she involved new accomplices, including several family members. In Washington, D.C., during Walters's employment, commercial properties experienced an increase in assessed values. For instance, between 1999 and 2006, values increased from $18.73 billion to $40.4 billion. Property owners could challenge the assessed values and the related taxes. If they successfully challenged the property taxes paid, they received a refund from the government. Walters was able to create improper vouchers in the refunding process due to weak review and approval.

Walters needed to launder the checks to embezzle the money. She was a Bank of America customer, so she gave gifts to its tellers to cash and deposit the checks. In 1994, she had stolen five times more money than the previous year, so she sought out a bank employee with supervisory duties who could deposit the larger amount of money. She approached Walter Jones, a 20-year-old and recently hired manager, befriended him, and offered $100 gifts. While Jones declined her gifts at first due to bank policy, she eventually persuaded him to help deposit the checks. None of the co-conspirators were the payees on the checks, but Jones skipped the bank verification process and deposited the amounts into the co-conspirators' accounts. The co-conspirators then transferred part of the money to Walters's bank account. Between 2000 and 2007, nearly $10 million was transferred to her account. Of the $48 million, over $34 million (116 checks) were cashed and deposited at Bank of America. Of that amount, Jones personally cashed and deposited $18 million.

Discovery and investigation
In 2006, investigators at Bank of America noticed that Jones was depositing more money in his account than the amount of his annual salary. They also learned that Jones withdrew amounts from the account of fellow co-conspirator Jayrece Turnbull (Walters's niece) without Turnbull's signature. In February of 2007, Jones confessed to withdrawing $145,000 from Turnbull's account and was fired. Without Jones as supervisor, Walters and her remaining co-conspirators sought an alternative way to cash and deposit the checks. Turnbull started an account at SunTrust Banks for a fictional company, First American Home. When she deposited a check for $410,000 into the account and tried to transfer it to her personal account at Bank of America, SunTrust requested for her to verify that First American Home was incorporated. Turnbull then incorporated the company, and Walters sent a letter to SunTrust saying the company had been registered with DC's Office of Tax and Revenue. SunTrust sought further evidence, and Walters forged a tax sales form for Turnbull to submit. SunTrust was unconvinced and did not release the deposit. Turnbull hired an attorney who wrote SunTrust a letter demanding a release of the deposit. SunTrust turned the letter over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Bureau discovered the tax scam and notified the Washington, D.C. government.

Outcome
Harriette Walters was prosecuted for wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and tax evasion. She was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison. Her ten co-conspirators were sentenced to prison terms between one to nine years. Walter Jones was prosecuted for conspiracy to commit money laundering, and he was sentenced to 78 months in prison. Jayrece Turnbull was prosecuted for receipt of stolen property, conspiracy to commit money laundering, mail fraud, and tax evasion. She was sentenced to 9 years in prison. In addition, over 30 employees of the Washington, D.C. government were dismissed.