A federal grand jury today indicted Walda Luna and Perfecto Ruano of Wallace for conspiracy to commit mail fraud by filing fraudulent tax returns, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The couple was featured last month in Carolina Journal after the Raleigh office of the IRS filed a criminal complaint against them.
According to the indictment , Luna also faces three counts of filing false income tax returns, two counts of mail fraud, and two counts of aggravated identity theft. They allegedly obtained more than $12 million in fraudulent refunds from the IRS.
For several years, CJ has reported on a number of similar stories involving what the IRS calls Stolen Identity Refund Fraud, with several cases occurring in North Carolina and others as far away as Pennsylvania and New York.
The Luna-Ruano charges revolve around allegations that they obtained Individual Tax Identification Numbers for dozens of individuals who probably do not exist, along with phony dependents for these identities. The couple then allegedly filed tax returns in the names of those fake individuals and their dependents and claimed tax refunds in the names of the invented individuals. The refunds were mailed to post office boxes the couple rented or to their home.
The indictment notes that Luna, who owns a retail store in Wallace, was licensed to cash checks, and that refund checks had been issued for “75 of these fraudulent ITIN returns and were deposited in the couple’s bank account.”
The maximum penalty for the conspiracy charge is 20 years in prison. Luna also could receive minimum prison sentences of two years for each of the other charges. The government also is seeking forfeiture of nearly $3 million in cash.