A Colorado Springs man is in jail accused of running a tax-season scam that netted him more than $10,000 in less than a month, Colorado Springs police said Monday.
Randall Heath, 50, was arrested Feb. 2 on suspicion of 23 counts of money laundering, theft, identity theft, forgery and giving false information to a pawn broker. He is in the El Paso County jail.
Starting in mid-January, Colorado Springs police said, Heath used stolen identities to get thousands of dollars in loans from several Liberty Tax Service offices.
Liberty lends money to people anticipating tax refunds.
The stolen identities were obtained in a break-in at a home where records for a defunct business were kept, police said. The records included clients’ personal information.
Heath used that information to make fake driver’s licenses and phony W-2s for each of the victims. W-2s are a federal form used to report annual wages and the amount of income taxes withheld.
Heath allegedly used the phony W-2s to obtain seven $1,500 loans from different Liberty offices as well as a $50 bonus for each of the loans, for a total of $10,850.
Police seized $17,000 from a bank account Heath allegedly set up under the name of one of the identity-theft victims.
