IT Manager Gets 15 Months In Prison Following Dublin Fraud Scam

DUBLIN, CA — A man who worked as an IT manager for a Dublin-based apparel company has been sentenced to 15 months in prison and he's been ordered to pay restitution of $1,203,990.26 for mail fraud and filing a false tax return, according to the IRS.

Trenton Robinson, 47, received the sentence following a five-year investigation conducted by the IRS and FBI, according to announcement Friday from the IRS.

From 2010 to 2015, Robinson was a manager in the unnamed apparel company's IT department. He worked with the company's major IT vendor, Castro & Gregg Technologies, and approved hiring and work completed by C&G, the announcement said.

"C&G had a practice of overbilling ... or billing in advance for work that had not yet been done," the IRS said. "Specifically, at Robinson’s instruction, C&G billed ... for work that it had not done and was vague in terms of the future work to be done ... . In some instances, this billing practice meant that he approved invoices that were part legitimate but included padded costs or fake line items. In other instances, it meant approving invoices that were made up and had no connection to any specific project or actual work. This practice created a multi-million dollar slush fund at C&G."

As part of the scheme, Robinson diverted some of this money for his personal benefit, such as having C&G pay his wife a “consulting” fee, the IRS alleged. Initially the fees were paid in her name, later C&G paid the fees through entities created by Robinson’s wife, at his direction.

In total, his wife received more than $1.1 million through C&G that was paid by the apparel company Robinson worked for, according the the IRS.

For the tax years 2012 through 2015, Robinson and his wife "willfully failed to report their income on the tax returns," the IRS said.