CAMERON, MO — The District Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Missouri announced that a state prison inmate pleaded guilty in federal court to a tax refund scheme. Kevin D. Dunham, 45, an inmate at the Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron plead guilty following a Feb. 21, 2012, federal indictment.
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Dunham admitted he prepared false tax returns for inmates in 2008 and 2009 while he was incarcerated at prisons in Farmington and in Cameron. Dunham obtained inmates’ names and Social Security numbers and created false Form 1040EZs. Dunham also prepared false Form W2s on a typewriter he had in his cell, and filed those false forms with handwritten ones. The returns were mailed to inmates’ families outside the prison, who forwarded them to the IRS. The refund checks were then sent to the inmates’ families, who divided the money between themselves, the inmates, and Dunham.
Dunham received approximately $200 to $300 per false return, which was paid to his mother. She then deposited some of the money into his prison account.
The federal indictment sets forth that Dunham filed false tax returns totaling $139,644 in false claims. The IRS actually paid $54,814 in fraudulent refunds.
Under federal statutes, Dunham is subject to a sentence of up to five years in federal prison without parole, plus a fine up to $250,000 and an order of restitution. The U.S. Probation Office will schedule a sentence hearing after the completion of a pre-sentence investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Roseann A. Ketchmark is prosecuting this case. It was investigated by the IRS-Criminal Investigation.