A 28-year-old California woman awaiting sentencing by a federal court in San Francisco for filing false tax returns was caught last week at a high-end Waikiki store after allegedly making purchases using a fraudulent credit card.
Ebony Standifer was charged Friday with second-degree identity theft, two counts of second-degree theft, and unauthorized possession of confidential personal information. Her bail was set at $200,000. She is being held at Oahu Community Correctional Center awaiting arraignment in Circuit Court on Thursday.
Police said she was one of two women who purchased items from the Louis Vuitton store on Kalakaua Avenue on Wednesday using credit cards that employees later discovered were fraudulent. Police said the women used separate fraudulent cards.
Standifer was arrested when she returned to the store the same day and was detained by security until police arrived. All of the merchandise was recovered and returned to the store. The other suspect is still at large.
In August Standifer, under a plea agreement, admitted that she conspired with others to file false federal income tax returns from 2010 through 2012, according to the U.S. attorney for Northern California.
The U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco said that as part of the scheme, individuals with whom Standifer conspired provided her with names of people for whom to file false tax returns. Standifer used those identities and filed returns without showing the documents to the people listed on them. In addition to inserting the person’s name and Social Security number, Standifer made up figures for income and the amount of taxes that were withheld.
Standifer filed the false returns electronically from various locations and kept notebooks that recorded information regarding the people whose identity she misappropriated, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Standifer requested that the IRS deposit the fraudulent tax refunds onto prepaid debit cards that she could access, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. In total, during 2010-2012 Standifer filed or assisted in filing false tax returns in the aggregate amount of $656,000 for the 2009-2011 tax years. Of that amount, the IRS paid fraudulent claims in the amount of $193,602.
The U.S. attorney’s office said Standifer is scheduled to be sentenced March 6 in San Francisco and was out on bail in that case.