CHICAGO (CBS) — A woman has been sentenced to five years in prison for a scheme to file false tax returns and download fraudulent COVID-19 stimulus bills that employ the identities of murder victims in Chicago and beyond, some of whom are children.
As CBS 2’s Charlie De Mar reported when Katrina Pierce was first charged in the case in 2021, the families of victims of murder and violence in Chicago, of course, were already grieving when they lost loved ones, only to be victimized again, this time financially. .
In September 2021, Pierce was charged with 10 counts of wire fraud, six counts of nuisance identity theft, 3 counts of making false statements to the U. S. Small Business Administration, and 3 counts of making false statements to the U. S. Small Business Administration. A charge of ownership of identity documents to defraud the United States.
In August 2022, Pierce pleaded guilty to one count of cable fraud and one count of nuisance identity theft.
Accusation of Katrina Pierce through Todd Feurer on Scribd
On Friday, U. S. District Judge Virginia Kendall sentenced Pierce to months in prison, followed by 3 years of probation.
Among Pierce’s patients was Amari Brown, who was just 7 years old when he was shot and killed on a sidewalk in the Humboldt Park community in 2015.
According to the charges, an IRS special agent reported that the Cook County Bureau of Vital Statistics first suspected Pierce in October or November 2019, when a member downloaded electronic applications for death certificates sent through bureaux de change within a day.
It turned out that Pierce had applied for 37 death certificates in 2019 alone and managed to get at least 26. All were murder victims ranging in age from 2 to 22 who had been killed on Chicago’s South and West Side.
The death certificate requests also came from a “Tracy Scott” and a “Tammy Jones,” the same West Englewood community that lived on Winchester Avenue that Pierce herself had used, according to the complaint. Both names are believed to be pseudonyms of Pierce. The entries claimed that “Scott” worked for “Pierce Auto” and Jones for “Pierce Inc. “in the West Englewood building, according to the charges.
In January 2020, IRS agents visited the West Englewood building, which turned out to be a two-unit residential apartment, according to the complaint. They went to the trash cans in the back and took 4 garbage bags, in which they found handwritten deserted ones. notes on all the other people who died, with names, dates of birth and other information, and with death tactics such as “killed,” “stabbed,” or “falling” scrawled on the margins.
Pierce sought to borrow the identities of murder victims on St. Louis, and at least the call of a shooting victim in St. Louis was used through Pierce to file false tax returns in 2020 and 2021 for fake COVID stimulus checks and prepaid debit cards. according to rates.
Investigators later decided that Pierce filed more than a dozen false tax returns in 2020 and 2021, using his own name, alias or stolen ID.
The first, a Form 1040 filed in February 2020 on behalf of a murder victim whose identity Pierce stole after fraudulently obtaining his death certificate from the county, according to the complaint. The form claimed a $1,923 refund to be deposited into an account at Green Dot Bank, which has problems with prepaid debit cards, according to the complaint.
The guy Pierce is accused of in the case was shot and killed in a lawn in 2013, and Pierce claimed to be his sister, according to the charges.
There were many other tax returns Pierce filed that followed a similar pattern, according to the complaint. In one, he claimed as a dependent son a 7-year-old boy he shot and killed on a Chicago sidewalk in 2015, and claimed he was entitled to children’s tax credits and a earned source of income tax credits.
The boy at issue in this case is believed to be Amari, who was killed in a shooting from a moving vehicle in the 1100 block of North Harding Avenue on July 4, 2015. His murder made headlines that summer.
Another filed in April 2020 used so-called “Rajona Pierce,” an alias Pierce had admitted to using before, according to the complaint. This indicated a $1 source of income and did not claim a refund, and claimed that it represented receipts from a good-looking salon at 4946 S. State St. – Where once stood a Robert Taylor Homes skyscraper and where there is nothing at all, depending on the charges.
Pierce gave false statements about the call of a man who was shot twice on St. Louis, in 2020 and 2021, according to the complaint. She used her own home in Grand Crossing for the return and indexed a prepaid debit card checking account provided through Stride Bank.
Stride Bank records showed that the U. S. Treasury was not in the U. S. The U. S. Department deposited a $10 refund on a $100 source of income request and a $1,400 COVID-19 stimulus payment into the account Pierce created.
Pierce also filed a tax refund alleging that the slain 7-year-old boy, believed to be Amari, was her dependent in 2019, claiming she was entitled to a child tax credit and a earned income tax credit.
The charging documents imply that Pierce could continue to lie directly when he arrived in Amari.
The complaint said: “(When Pierce applied for (Amari Brown’s) death certificate in 2019, she claimed she was A. B. ‘s aunt, contrary to the previous tax, which claimed that A. B. it was his son. “
The IRS agent reported that the use of accounts with banks that issue prepaid debit cards was an attempt at money laundering.
Pierce also implemented several economic crisis loans on behalf of small businesses that were not genuine or located in Illinois or other states, adding Iowa, Montana and Idaho, according to the complaint. None of those programs were approved due to suspected fraud.
In one case, Pierce is suspected of taking out a loan on behalf of a production company called “Katrina D. Pierce LLC” from West Englewood, which claimed to have 106 workers and $670,000 in gross revenue.
He also implemented for loans the call of a farm business in southern Illinois, an Idaho small business owner and a farmer from Montana and two from Iowa, according to the charges.
The IRS officer spoke with Pierce’s niece’s boyfriend, who admitted that he and his friend lived on the current West Englewood construction site that served as the basis for many tax returns and loan applications, according to the complaint. He said Pierce had already been jailed for 11 years for fraud and that Pierce had an argument with his friend.
The niece’s boyfriend said Pierce moved in with them after his criminal release in April 2019 and moved in around spring 2020, according to the complaint. He told the officer that Pierce didn’t like him because it kept Pierce from letting his niece down.
He also said he continued to receive mail on behalf of others: death certificates and prepaid debit cards that the government has now connected Pierce to.
Pierce’s own niece corroborated this story, in the face of the accusations.
In 2012, Pierce was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for a similar scheme. She turned seven and was released in 2019.
Pierce already had 10 convictions for fraud or theft at the time, federal prosecutors said at the time of his indictment.
In 2012, Pierce was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for a similar scheme. She turned seven and was released in 2019.
Pierce already had 10 convictions for fraud or theft at the time, federal prosecutors said at the time.
In the 2012 case, Pierce pleaded guilty to fraud and identity theft. Systems designed to gain advantages in the management of children and parents, and defraud governments across the country, all to enrich themselves. Fly [your] profession full-time and you do it smartly.
In the earlier case, Pierce received driver’s licenses, birth certificates and Social Security cards, the names and identifying data of the deceased, and the identification cards he received displayed his photo next to the names of the deceased, prosecutors said. This lasted from January 2007 to July 2008.
She also received fraudulent documents from “Rajona Pierce,” the pseudonym she is also accused of in the latest case, prosecutors said. said at the time.
In the 2012 case, Pierce prompted the filing of about 180 fraudulent federal tax returns for fiscal years 2006 and 2007, one of which claimed to be a deceased person. He falsely claimed more than a million dollars in tax refunds and received more than $60,000 before the IRS knew about it, prosecutors said at the time.
Pierce also defrauded an Illinois Department of Human Services program that invested child care providers, in which he used stolen identities and fraudulent documents to form a fictitious child care provider, fictitious youth and fictitious parents, prosecutors said. In total, he raised more than $146,000 from the state on behalf of thirteen child care providers, prosecutors said.
He also received $3,800 in food stamps from the U. S. Department of Agriculture. He earned more than $21,000 by filing false tax returns in Kansas, Maryland, New York and other states, prosecutors said.
He also paid others to lie to federal agents in the 2012 case, prosecutors said.