Texan gets 10 years, ordered to repay $294,809 for tax-refund fraud

A Texarkana, Texas, man was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison and was ordered to pay $294,809.93 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service for his admitted participation in a sophisticated scheme that resulted in the filing of 104 fraudulent claims for tax refunds.

Eric G. Hicks, 44, pleaded guilty in November to two charges: conspiracy to file false claims against the United States and submitting false and fraudulent claims.

At his plea hearing in the Little Rock courtroom of U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes, Hicks admitted conspiring with a Little Rock woman to steal about $555,000 in government funds from October 2010 through March 2012.

His co-defendant, Lakeshia D. Calvin, 35, a former professional tax preparer in Little Rock, is awaiting a jury trial scheduled to begin Sept. 10 on the same charges.

Hicks and Calvin were jointly indicted on Sept. 7, 2016, in the Eastern District of Arkansas, but the indictment wasn’t unsealed until April 13, 2017, three days after Hicks was arrested in Miami on a federal warrant from Arkansas.

According to the indictment and Assistant U.S. Attorney Angela Jegley, Hicks and Calvin filed claims for refunds ranging from $2,247 to $10,024 on behalf of people they claimed had been employed by fictitious businesses that they or their “associates” had created. The indictment says they also prepared and filed fraudulent tax returns in their own names, as though they had been employed by business entities that didn’t actually employee them.

Jegley said in November that investigators obtained much of their evidence by listening to recorded calls that Hicks placed to Calvin while he was in jail, giving her detailed instructions for setting up companies, obtaining federal identifiers and establishing business bank accounts. Jegley said Hicks directed Calvin to websites and online resources, and told her how to transfer the tax-refund money from accounts into which it was deposited into other accounts and then onto pre-paid cards where it could be used.

Holmes sentenced Hicks, who had a significant criminal history, to 10 years in prison on the conspiracy charge and 2½ half years on the false-statements charge, but ordered him to serve them concurrently. Hicks had faced up to 12½ years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. He was represented by attorney Mark O’Brien of Tampa, Fla.