Mailman charged with stealing $1M in IRS refunds

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stayed a New York City mail carrier from allegedly running a scam that used phony tax returns to steal more than $1 million in IRS refunds.

Brooklyn resident Oscar Lopez, 36, was arrested Thursday at the Bronx post office where he works and charged with conspiracy and theft of government funds, federal prosecutors and investigators said.

A seven-page criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court alleged Lopez obtained refund checks issued in the names of individuals who purportedly lived along his delivery route in ZIP code 10460. That central Bronx area includes the West Farms neighborhood and the famed Bronx Zoo.

At least in part, the scam allegedly relied on using Social Security numbers issued in Puerto Rico, according to allegations in the court complaint by Kevin Adams, a U.S. Postal Service special agent. Most residents of the Caribbean island aren't required to file federal tax returns as long as their income is earned there.

Alleged tax scammers who use stolen Puerto Rican identities and Social Security numbers "minimize the risks that a legitimate federal tax return already will have been filed by the person whose identity has been stolen," wrote Adams.

Lopez gave tax refund checks from his delivery route to an unidentified cooperating witness and another person who faces charges as a co-conspirator, wrote Adams. They helped deposit the checks in bank accounts and give Lopez a percentage of the money, prosecutors charged.

In examples cited by the complaint, the IRS issued separate 2010 refunds of $7,306, $8,755 and $8,190 to individuals whose Social Security numbers had been issued in Puerto Rico. The employers linked to the refunds did not match information in IRS records, the complaint charged.

The three checks were mailed to addresses along Lopez's delivery route, and were deposited in a Branch Banking & Trust (BB&T) account associated with the cooperating witness, Adams wrote.

The cooperator deposited more than $108,000 in Lopez's checking account at a Bank of America branch in Brooklyn between April and November of 2011, the complaint charged.

In all, more than $1 million in federal tax refund checks mailed to Lopez's Bronx delivery route were deposited in the co-conspirator's accounts, Adams wrote.

"As a taxpayer and a United States Postal Service employee, I find the allegations against the defendant disturbing," said Philip Bartlett, Inspector-in-Charge of the New York office of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. "I have little tolerance for those who would use their position of trust to facilitate criminal activity, as is alleged in this investigation."

Lopez was scheduled to be presented in Manhattan federal court later Thursday. He could face a maximum prison term of five years if convicted on the conspiracy charge, and 10 years if found guilty on the theft charge, prosecutors said.

Tax refund fraud is one of the most critical problems plaguing the IRS. More than 500,000 taxpayers had their identities stolen by thieves who used the data to file fraudulent tax returns and collect millions of dollars in undeserved refunds from 2008 through May of 2012, IRS data shows.