If you’re like me, when you hear about fraud and older people, you wonder how much money the senior citizens lost to crooks.
A septuagenarian Maryland couple turned that cliché on its head.
James William Wilson, Jr., 78, and his wife, Maureen Ann Wilson, 77, this week were sentenced to federal prison for their roles in connection with an insurance fraud scheme.
And yes, charges of filing false tax returns were among the multiple counts on which the elderly Maryland couple were convicted earlier this year at their separate trials, his in January and hers in March.
Sentencing details: At the July 9 hearing in Baltimore, just about a half hour southeast from the couple’s Owings Mills’ home, U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow sentenced James Wilson to 12 years for 13 counts of fraud, three counts of money laundering, two counts of filing false tax returns, and one count of aggravated identity theft.
Maureen Wilson received a four-year prison term for one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, four counts of mail fraud, two counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, one count of money laundering, and two counts of filing a false return.
Both were ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $18,705,520.30. The court also entered a forfeiture order, including over $14.8 million in seized funds.
Cases against the couple: Court documents and evidence presented at trial revealed that the Wilsons conspired to defraud life-insurance companies by securing more than 40 life-insurance policies.
The scheme included mispresenting policy applicants’ health, wealth, and existing life-insurance coverage.
Total death benefits from these policies exceeded $20 million.
Court filings identified several major life insurers affected by the scheme, and listed the estimated payout losses of each company. They included Nationwide Life Insurance, $3.51 million; John Hancock, $2.33 million; American General Life Insurance Co., $1.35 million; AXA Life Insurance, $1 million; Fidelity Guaranty Life Insurance, $152,933; Midland Life Insurance, $99,336; and Lincoln Benefit Life, $50,658.
Additionally, prosecutors said Wilson, a former Maryland life insurance broker, defrauded individual investors to receive funds that he used to pay premiums on the fraudulently obtained life-insurance policies. The couple concealed the fraud by transferring the proceeds to multiple bank accounts, including accounts in the name of trusts.
Then the Wilsons filed false individual income-tax returns for 2018 and 2019, which concealed the fraudulent proceeds from each year, approximately $5.7 million and $2 million, respectively.
After obtaining the policies, the Wilsons used forged signatures to make themselves, and other nominees they controlled, the owners and beneficiaries of the life insurance policies.
Law enforcement said that to further the scheme, Maureen Wilson impersonated other people when speaking with the life insurance companies.
Tax Felon Friday: IRS Criminal Investigation agents investigated the case, with assistance from the Maryland Insurance Administration and the Maryland Office of The Attorney General.
The IRS-CI role earns this case of golden years gone awry recognition on the ol’ blog’s Tax Felon Friday page. That’s also a good place to start if you want to catch up on all sorts of tax miscreants.
And if you want more tax crime posts, notably those that were published long before I gave them a special end-of-week feature, you can peruse, what else, the tax crimes category. You'll find this post at the top of that collection right now, so just scroll down for more.
You also might find these items of interest:
- The long history, and future of, tax cheating
- IRS-CI chief likens tax law enforcement unit’s recent successes to takedown of Al Capone
- Social media financial influencer pleads guilty to Ponzi scheme that cost investors more than $11 million
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