A father and daughter are convicted at Trial for Involvement in $100 Million Fraudulent Tax Refund Scheme.

Kenneth Edmonson and his daughter Danielle claimed that the government owed them $175 million in tax refunds. They were paid out $3.4 million in refunds through the issuance of U.S. Treasury checks before the IRS realized that they had in fact, never bought a winning ticket.

In 2015, Danielle Takeila Edmonson managed to get the IRS to pay out $239K in tax refunds for winning an unspecified amount of money from the lottery. With that she bought a BMW and took $60 000 in cash. The IRS never received any corresponding forms to support the payment of any of these taxes.

35 -year-old Daniellie Edmonson is said to have a master’s in business and filed another bogus tax return in 2016 asking for $80 million in refunds on an alleged income of $141 million.

They replied to her: “Your demand has no legal validity and is not payable through any federal agency. Your scheme appears to be akin to a fraud.”

In September 2017, K. Edmonson filed a fraudulent tax return seeking a refund of approximately $725,111. Department of Treasury mailed a tax refund check to K. Edmonson for $734,266.27 (including interest). Shortly thereafter, K. Edmonson deposited this tax refund check into his bank account.

Kenneth’s house was raided in January 2018. During the search, in the bedrooms of D. Edmonson and K. Edmonson, law enforcement found letters addressed to both individuals warning them of the frivolous nature of their returns. Shortly after law enforcement left, despite warnings not to do so, K. Edmonson went to his bank to attempt to withdraw the funds from the account that received the fraudulent refund check.

Just when you thought this story couldn’t get any better…

In March 2019, Danielle was arrested. They both claim to be “aboriginal indigenous Moorish Americans” (an offshoot of the sovereign citizen movement) who are immune to government authority.

A nonprofit that tracks American extremist groups, The Southern Poverty Law Center, describes Moorish Sovereign Citizens as a small sect that believe: “… that they get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore, and they don’t think they should have to pay taxes.”Federal courts have repeatedly rejected any such claims

Kenneth has already got himself in trouble with U.S. District Judge Robin L. Rosenberg because of his belief in his own “sovereign immunity” and was removed from court for contempt.

Sentencing is scheduled for February 20, 2020, at 2:00 p.m.

Interesting fact- A Moorish “Grand Sheik,” who led a sovereign-citizen-style fraud scheme seeking more than $100 million in tax refunds, has been sentenced to 68 months in federal prison.