Fake Tax Preparer Gets Four Years in Prison

A federal judge on Thursday sentenced an Owings Mills woman to four years in prison for posing as a tax preparer and filing falsified tax returns to obtain inflated refunds.

In a hearing in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Judge William Quarles Jr. also sentenced Karen Kimble, 40, to three years of supervised release and ordered her to pay $84,411 in restitution to the IRS and $26,419.92 to the State of Maryland, according to the Justice Department. In her recent trial, Kimble was convicted of six counts of wire fraud, five counts of subscribing to a false tax return, five counts of aiding in the filing of a false tax return, four counts of aggravated identity theft and visa fraud.

According to evidence at her trial, “Kimble falsely held herself out to others as a tax preparer with the skill and knowledge to prepare tax returns for others,” the Justice Department said in a statement. From 2007 to 2012, “she falsely inflated credits and deductions on her personal and client tax returns to fraudulently increase the tax refund.”

For example, Kimble claimed “tens of thousands of dollars” in unreimbursed job expenses when she actually had none, the Justice Department said. She directed that tax refunds be mailed to her or directly deposited to her bank account, or that part of the refund be sent to the taxpayer and part to Kimble.

In addition, in February 2008, Kimble married a Ghanian citizen, “knowing that the marriage was not valid because the Ghanian was not legally divorced from his first wife,” the Justice Department said. She then prepared and filed false documents in state court and with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “purporting to show that the Ghanian man had been divorced before she married him.”