Runner-Up: Krystle Marie Reyes provides an outrageous example of the sort of tax fraud methheads are capable of.
Runner-up for top story of the month:
Krystle Marie Reyes, 25, accused of tax evasion, theft and computer crimes in which she duped the state of Oregon into giving her a $2.1 million tax refund on reported earnings of $3 million. Having $2.1 million withheld suggests, in a state with a virtual 9% flat tax on all taxable earnings, at least $23 million of income. Returns on which such earnings are reported would rarely, if ever, be self-prepared (she used Turbo Tax). However, despite the return being red-flagged by Oregon’s automated system, in a subsequent manual review state workers (incredibly) OK’d the refund, which was loaded on to a debit card for Reyes. This occurred despite at least three glaring red flags: an impossibly high withholding-to-earnings ratio, self-preparation of a very high-income return and loading this much money onto a debit card. Her scam might not have been discovered was it not for Reyes reporting the card lost or stolen after she debited $150,000 on various extravagances. Before I saw the drug for which she was also arrested, simply seeing her face here and reading the basics of the crime, I blurted out to my office-mate Kristin, “It’s got to be meth.” Indeed. But I’d like to know what the state worker(s) who approved the refund was/were using. If it’s an inside job (the Oregon Department of Revenue is looking at the possibility), I’ll predict either alcohol or meth is on board in a very big (i.e., addictive) way. By the way, I didn’t notice the caption under the picture in which meth was mentioned before identifying her as a likely meth-head. Unsurprisingly, several other sources on a Google search failed to even mention the meth possession charges—without knowledge of which we can’t begin to fathom her sense of invincibility. Isn’t it amazing how understanding addiction makes sense of so much that would otherwise be nonsensical?