Couple taste U.S. justice

Ukrainians get prison in tax fraud

A couple who fled Ukraine 21 years ago found a lot of what they were looking for in the United States — religious freedom, security, business opportunity, good schools and a comfortable life in Bayside.

Now, they have also experienced U.S. justice, sentenced to consecutive federal prison terms for their parts in an identity theft and tax fraud scheme that funneled more than a $1 million in bogus tax returns back to their native country.

Vladimir Sonin, 50, was sentenced Thursday to nearly five years in federal prison for his role in the international scam. He will start his sentence in May, and when he gets out of prison, his wife, Natalya Sonina, 47, will begin serving a 39-month prison term.

The couple is also responsible for about $308,000 in restitution.

U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller granted the

sequential sentences to allow Sonina to continue raising the couple’s four children.

Husband and wife will each serve three years of supervised release after they leave prison.

Lawyers for the couple had explained that, while they took in about $200,000 over about two years of the crime, money wasn’t their main motivation, but rather fear for Sonina’s brother back in Ukraine.

Others stole the more than 1,700 identities and prepared the false tax returns. The Bayside couple — along with Sonina’s sister, Irina Tinney of Milwaukee — set up dozens of fake addresses and post office boxes where debit cards with bogus refunds were sent.

Then they would collect and use the cards at ATMs around southeastern Wisconsin to obtain cash. Sonin was careful to use disguises and park his car away from surveillance cameras near the ATMs.

Most of the money, and some cards, were mailed back to Ukraine.

In 2013, Sonin was caught trying to open a post office box in someone else’s name in Sussex, which led to an extensive investigation and indictments in 2015.

All three defendants pleaded guilty last year and agreed to cooperate with investigators. Several documents in the cases are sealed, and segments of both Sonin and Sonina’s sentencing hearings — about 12 minutes’ worth Thursday — were conducted in secret to discuss the extent and nature of that cooperation.

Sonin’s attorney said Thursday that his client believed the money on the debit cards was from people who had paid to visit child porn websites, and that he felt remorse when he learned the true victims were the IRS and state revenue departments that issued the refunds based on phony tax returns.

Stadtmueller questioned why the IRS, knowing the extent of the fraud problem, continues to send millions of dollars in refunds to early filers instead of waiting until after April 15 to sort out multiple returns for individual taxpayers.

Sonin and his wife were convicted of tax fraud and aggravated identity theft.

Tinney pleaded guilty to structuring — wiring money overseas in a series of amounts less than $3,000 to avoid triggering reporting requirements. She was sentenced Feb. 5 to three years of probation and ordered to pay almost $211,000 in restitution.

The family all left Ukraine in 1995 and later became U.S. citizens.