A 34-year-old former professional athlete pleaded guilty to conspiracy to file a false income tax claim. He faces a maximum of 10 years in federal prison if convicted.<\/p>\n
According to the plea agreement, Freddie L. Mitchell, II,<\/strong> of Lakeland, entered the guilty plea on Friday. On November 30, 2009, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Unit determined that a fraudulent tax form claiming $1,968,288 had been filed in 2008.<\/p>\n <\/strong>According to the indictment, Freddie Mitchell<\/strong> is alleged to have introduced another professional athlete, identified as A. G.,<\/strong> to a couple who claimed they could get him more money on his income tax return.<\/p>\n Mitchell <\/strong>and A. G.<\/strong> flew to Orlando in July 2009, to meet Jamie Russ-Walls<\/strong> and her husband, Richard Walls.<\/strong> The couple claimed that they were in the tax preparation business and could get A. G. <\/strong>additional money because of \u201cgrey areas\u201d in his tax returns.<\/p>\n The victim, (A. G.),<\/strong> provided Russ-Walls, <\/strong>who also claimed to be a former IRS employee, with copies of his personal information. Without his knowledge, a fraudulent federal income tax return was filed in A. G.\u2019s<\/strong> name.<\/p>\n The form filed falsely claimed that A. G.<\/strong> had a business loss of $5,367,775, which entitled him to a return of $1,968,288.<\/p>\n The false return contained paperwork requesting the refund be direct deposited into the bank accounts of Mitchell <\/strong>and Jamie Russ-Walls.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n A. G.<\/strong> learned about the fraudulent activity when the IRS rejected his regular tax return filed in October 2009.<\/p>\n The IRS was able to cancel payment on the fraudulent return and determined A. G.<\/strong> had no involvement in the fraudulent return.<\/p>\n During the investigation, agents also discovered that Mitchell <\/strong>and the couple had filed five additional claims in 2009 totaling $2,264,005. Each of the five claims had been accompanied by a false W-2 form showing wages in the millions of dollars from Chameleon Enterprises, LLC.<\/p>\n Mitchell<\/strong> had incorporated the business in 2003 and listed himself as its manager. He opened a mailbox in Kathleen, Florida, to receive correspondence. When contacted about the wages allegedly paid to the five individuals, Mitchell <\/strong>falsely verified their employment and income. Records later revealed that Chameleon actually had been dissolved as a corporation by the State of Florida in 2007.<\/p>\n Jamie Russ-Walls<\/strong> and Richard Walls<\/strong> previously pleaded guilty for their roles in the criminal offense.<\/p>\n Jamie Russ-Walls<\/strong> was sentenced to 5 years of probation on February 1, 2013. Richard Walls <\/strong>was sentenced to 3 years and 1 month in federal prison on February 14, 2013.<\/p>\n A sentencing date has not been set for Mitchell.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A 34-year-old former professional athlete pleaded guilty to conspiracy to file a false income tax claim. He faces a maximum of 10 years in federal prison if convicted. According to the plea agreement, Freddie L. Mitchell, II, of Lakeland, entered the guilty plea on Friday. On November 30, 2009, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation […]<\/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-19952","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\/19952","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=19952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}