{"id":11580,"date":"2011-11-28T16:41:03","date_gmt":"2011-11-28T21:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=11580"},"modified":"2011-11-28T16:41:03","modified_gmt":"2011-11-28T21:41:03","slug":"drop-scam-defendant-pleads-guilty-to-tax-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=11580","title":{"rendered":"Drop Scam Defendant Pleads Guilty To Tax Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, U. S. District <strong>Judge Richard A. Lazzara<\/strong> sentenced a 25-year-old Tampa man to 54 months in federal prison. He entered a guilty plea on tax fraud and aggravated identity theft.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Roger Snells<\/strong>, who pleaded guilty on September 2nd, was also ordered to pay mandatory restitution of $26,164.61 to the U. S. Treasury.<\/p>\n<p>According to court documents, <strong>Snells<\/strong> admitted to using the names and identifying information of deceased individuals. He electronically filed fraudulent federal tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service, and received tax refunds.<\/p>\n<p>Law enforcement officials located more than 100 fraudulent tax returns on <strong>Snells\u2019<\/strong> laptop computer. Some of the returns were filed. Police said<strong> Snells<\/strong> intended to file the others. He reportedly submitted $165,599 false claims to the IRS, police said.<\/p>\n<p>Police arrested <strong>Snells<\/strong> in September, along with 48 other defendants during the Operation Rainmaker investigation. The arrests were the culmination of task force investigation that began more than a year ago. Some of the agencies involved included the United States Secret Service, the United States Postal Inspection Service, the Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Office, the Tampa Police Department, the Hillsborough County State Attorney\u2019s Office, and the U. S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the Middle District of Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, U. S. District Judge Richard A. Lazzara sentenced a 25-year-old Tampa man to 54 months in federal prison. He entered a guilty plea on tax fraud and aggravated identity theft. Roger Snells, who pleaded guilty on September 2nd, was also ordered to pay mandatory restitution of $26,164.61 to the U. S. Treasury. According [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}