Daughter of Broward County clerk arrested

Monika Jenkins, 33, faces federal charges after allegedly filing false tax returns, records show

The daughter of Broward County Clerk of Court Brenda D. Forman is facing federal criminal charges, accused with eight co-defendants in a criminal enterprise that hacked into businesses’ computer servers, filed hundreds of fraudulent tax returns using stolen identities and received millions in refunds, federal court records show.

Monika Jenkins, 33, was arrested Thursday and was being held in the Broward Main Jail on a hold for the U.S. Marshals Office, jail records show. The arrest was originally reported by the Broward courthouse news and gossip site JAABlog.

She is facing charges of racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations conspiracy, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft for her role in the crimes that spanned several years, according to the indictment.

Among her co-defendants are Andi “Junior” Jacques, Louis Noel Michel, Dickenson Elan, Michael Jean Poix and Vladimyr Cherelus. The names of three other defendants are redacted in a copy of the indictment obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Forman, whose last name was Jenkins before she married former Broward Clerk Howard Forman in 2013, has not responded to a request for comment about Monika Jenkins’ arrest.

Attorneys representing Jenkins did not respond to messages requesting comment.

Jenkins and her co-defendants allegedly used a website, called the Marketplace in the indictment, that “illegally sold” usernames and passwords to “compromised computer servers” and personal identifying information of U.S. citizens, the document says. They then used that stolen information to file tax returns through various entities.

The group accessed the computer servers of Certified Public Accountant and tax preparation businesses where they gathered victims’ personal information as well as past tax return documents those firms had filed, the indictment says. They oper

ated several businesses across South Florida that claimed to be “legitimate tax preparation firms” and used the stolen identities to obtain Preparer Tax Identification Numbers and Electronic Filing Identification Numbers issued to professionals by the IRS.

The indictment lists at least 14 CPA and tax preparation firms that were victims of their enterprise in states including Georgia, Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio and in several Florida cities.

Jenkins is accused of “often” receiving logins to computer servers from a co-defendant whose name is redacted in the indictment, logins that he had bought on the illegal Marketplace website, according to the indictment. She used stolen personal information to file tax returns in addition to filing “self-prepared returns” and allegedly opened bank accounts that she and others used for the returns.

Between January 2016 and April 2016, Jenkins and the others filed over 1,000 false tax returns using an illegitimate company they created called Edvert Tax Prep based in West Palm Beach. They received over $5 million in refunds from those alone, according to the indictment.

On one day in January 2016, Jenkins received an email from a co-conspirator with names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth for people that included clients of a CPA firm in Connecticut, the indictment says. That information was later used in fraudulent tax returns filed through Edvert. They claimed over $3 million in a seven-month span in 2016.

In February that year, the indictment says Jenkins emailed a co-defendant a photo of a laptop that showed she had remote access to the computer server of a CPA firm in Arizona. A few days later, Jenkins sent a co-defendant a list of personal identifying information taken from the CPA firm in Arizona and wrote, “DO THOSE SEND MORE AT 2am,” according to the indictment.

They garnered at least $2 million more from hundreds of false returns in 2017. A drafted email that Jenkins wrote from February 2017 included the names of people and clients of a CPA firm in Georgia whose information was used to file the fraudulent documents. Jenkins had written in the email, “million dollar dreams and federal nightmares,” the indictment says.

Jenkins also had sent an email with a photo of handwritten notes that had the name, birth date, Social Security number and IRS-issued identification numbers of one of the principals of the CPA firm in Georgia, according to the indictment.

Broward County court records show Jenkins had previously been arrested on felony charges in 2009 and 2010 for grand theft in the third degree and 10 charges in 2016.

An arrest report says a Sunrise Police Department officer stopped Jenkins in 2016 while she was driving a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee with its tag improperly displayed. The officer found that the car was one that had been reported stolen from Fort Lauderdale over a year earlier.

The officer found three drivers licenses with fake names and her photo inside Jenkins’ purse, along with five credit and debit cards with various names, the arrest report said. Jenkins told the officer they were her friends and she was holding on to them “because they didn’t have wallets.”

Court records say Jenkins was sentenced to two years of probation, ending in 2020.