Prison Medical Records Clerk Stole Inmate IDs to Claim $1M in Bogus Tax Refunds

The Alabama Department of Corrections employee had access to inmate identification information from databases maintained by the state.

The clerk, Sasha Webb, on several occasions stole IDs from those databases and sold them to Harvey James and his sister, Jacqueline Slaton, so that they could file false tax returns.  Collectively, they claimed more than $1 million in fraudulent tax refunds.

The Slatons instructed that some of the false refunds be sent to prepaid debit cards and some issued via check.

A U.S. Postal Service employee, pulled into the scheme, had the cards and checks delivered to addresses on his route, so he could pocket them.

Vernon Harrison, the USPS employee, “picked the refunds up on his route and passed them on to another individual, who in turn gave them to James and Jacqueline Slaton,” the Montgomery Advertiser reports.

Jacqueline Slaton was in the process of filing false returns when IRS agents executed a search warrant and immediately found she had access to hundreds of stolen identities.