A 41-year-old Denver woman has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for her role in a multimillion-dollar tax scheme orchestrated by her boyfriend while he was locked up in a Denver jail.
Chief U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger also sentenced Sherry Charleston, to three years of supervised release for conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service, according to a news release Wednesday by Jeffrey Dorschner, U.S. Justice Department spokesman.
Charleston and her boyfriend Jaquon Mucsarney were indicted on mail fraud conspiracy, aggravated identity theft and obstruction of justice charges in January. Mucsarney also involved his mother, Schosche Mucsarney, in an elaborate scheme to obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax refunds.
For her role, was sentenced on Nov. 22 to five years of probation and ordered to repay the IRS more than $195,000 in restituion. Charges against Jaquon Mucsarney are still pending.
Charleston participated in the scheme between Jan. 14 to Oct. 27 in 2015. She helped create fictitious companies and issue employment identification numbers.
She opened a business bank account for one of the shell companies and deposited IRS refund checks into it. Thirteen refund checks totaling $119,934 were placed into the account. She would then funnel the money into Jaquon Mucsarney’s prison inmate account, Dorschner indicated.
Charleston also lied to an IRS special agent investigating the case. Following her boyfriend’s advice she also skipped a federal grand jury hearing where she was supposed to testify.
