A former Internal Revenue Service employee has been sentenced to two years and one day in prison for his role in an identity theft tax refund fraud scheme.
Kenneth Goheen, 57, of Austin Texas, received the prison sentence Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel also ordered him to forfeit $15,442.02 seized from his bank accounts and pay a remaining sum of $104,292.02 restitution to the government. Judge Yeakel also ordered that Goheen be placed on supervised release for a period of three years after completing his prison term.
Goheen pleaded guilty in June to one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. By pleading guilty, Goheen, a former Tax Examining Technician, admitted that he wrongfully obtained identification information from Individual Tax Identification Number applicants and used it to file more than 50 fraudulent tax returns between March 2013 and January 2015. Goheen collected over $120,000 in refunds based on those fraudulent tax returns.
“Goheen’s conduct is doubly offensive,” said U.S. Attorney Richard L. Durbin, Jr., in a statement. “He not only stole money from the government, but he used his unique position in the government—a position of trust—to wrongfully enrich himself.”
The case was investigated by Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation and the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matt Harding and Daniel Castillo prosecuted the case on behalf of the government.
