1040 Federal Tax Return (credit: AP)
Reporting Regine Schlesinger
(WBBM) - There are guilty pleas from two women who stole taxpayer IDs to claim hundreds of thousands of dollars in refunds for themselves.
LISTEN: Newsradio 780′s Regine Schlesinger Reports
It was last March when police in northwest Indiana pulled over a suspected drunken driver. Inside the women’s car, police found more than a hundred debit and credit cards and the personal information of dozens of taxpayers who’d had their returns prepared at an H&R Block office in East Chicago.
One of the women, 33-year-old Francesca Foster of Milwaukee, had worked there. She and 36-year-old Rosetta Buchanan of Chicago were arrested on fraud charges. Now the Northwest Indiana Times reports a plea deal,
The two have admitted to filing more than 80 fraudulent returns and victimizing some 260 people. They face up to 60 years in prison when they’re sentenced in April.
