Date: Feb. 26, 2025
Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov
Louisville, KY — A federal grand jury in Louisville returned an indictment on February 19, 2025, charging four Jefferson County, Kentucky men with wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, and aggravated identity theft.
U.S. Attorney Michael A. Bennett of the Western District of Kentucky, Special Agent in Charge Karen Wingerd of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), Cincinnati Field Office, and Chief Richard Sanders of the Jeffersontown Police Department made the announcement.
According to the indictment, between at least May 1, 2023, and Nov. 14, 2023, Anthony Phillips, Aubrey Walker, Sr., William Walker, and Robert Lewis conspired to defraud a victim company by falsely representing they were representatives of the company’s small business clients to make purchases from the victim company and charge them to the client accounts. The defendants are also charged with several counts of execution of this wire fraud scheme. In executing this scheme, the defendants caused wires to be transmitted in interstate commerce from the Western District of Kentucky to outside of Kentucky. Anthony Phillips is also charged with transferring, possessing, or using a means of identification of another person, without lawful authority, during and in relation to the wire fraud.
The defendants made their initial court appearances this week before a U.S. Magistrate Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. If convicted, Anthony Phillips faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 2 years and a maximum sentence of 26 years in prison. If convicted Aubrey Walker, Sr., William Walker, and Robert Lewis each face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.
There is no parole in the federal system.
This case is being investigated by the IRS-CI and the Jeffersontown Police Department.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Erin McKenzie is prosecuting the case.
IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.