Man tried to keep mistaken huge refund

The average tax refund is usually a couple of thousand dollars, but a man in Florida who earned less than $3,500 mistakenly received a check for a much higher amount: $980,000. How?

He filed his taxes.

The man, 29-year-old Ramon Blanchett, filed a 2016 income tax return in February 2017 that included a W-2 from Bridges Nursing and Rehabilitation in Tampa, Florida, showing $17,098 in wages and $1 million of federal income tax withholding, according to a forfeiture complaint filed in January by the U.S. government in federal court in Tampa.

But Blanchett was actually paid $2,098 and no tax was withheld, according to the complaint, which was first reported by the Tampa Bay Times.

Blanchett submitted a 1040 form that also said $1 million in taxes had been withheld, and that led the IRS to issue a refund for $980,000, according to the complaint.

And he kept the money, the complaint said — until the IRS found out about the error.

The complaint did not mention how the W2 came to include incorrect information. Representatives for Bridges Nursing and Rehabilitation did not respond to a request for comment.

Blanchett also submitted another W2, which was accurate, showing $1,399 in income from Sizzling Platter, a restaurant in Murray, Utah, and no withholding. An IRS spokesman declined to answer questions, citing a section of the Internal Revenue Code that prohibits the IRS from commenting on a specific taxpayer’s situation, and he did not immediately respond to queries about the systems in place to detect fraud on Friday.