Identity Theft and Mail Fraud Sentenced for Waukegan Man

A guy from Illinois was given a 29-month jail term today for filing bogus tax returns using stolen identities.

Wilmer Alexander Garcia Meza, of Waukegan, allegedly used other people’s personal information, such as their names, dates of birth, and identification documents like foreign passports, to fraudulently obtain Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) from the IRS.

This is stated in court documents and testimony given in court.

An ITIN is a tax processing number given by the IRS to those who do not have a Social Security number and are not qualified to apply for one.

Garcia filed tax forms in the stolen identities’ names from 2013 through 2017 using the ITINs, claiming thousands of dollars in phoney refunds.

Garcia later cashed the refund cheques provided by the IRS using identity cards with those names on them. Garcia resulted in a total tax loss of almost $221,923.

Garcia Meza was sentenced to a period of imprisonment as well as three years of supervised release and a payment of $221,923 in restitution to the federal government by U.S. District Judge Elaine E. Bucklo.

The declaration was issued by Tax Division Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department.

Criminal Investigation at IRS looked into the situation.