Date: February 24, 2023 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov A former Detroit resident was sentenced to 4 ½ years in prison for a tax fraud scheme where she sought to cheat the Internal Revenue Service and the state treasuries of six states of over $27 million in fraudulent tax refunds, United States Attorney Dawn N. Ison announced today. Ison was joined in the announcement by Charles Miller, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit Field Office of IRS Criminal Investigations. Sameerah Marrell, aka Sameerah Anderson, aka Sameerah Pickett, aka Crème, aka Loren Boyd, received the sentence from the Honorable Linda V. Parker, United States District Judge, in Detroit, Michigan. Judge Parker also ordered that the defendant serve three years on supervised release after her release from federal custody and pay the remaining restitution owed totaling $7,979,041.71. During the course of the scheme, Marrell had successfully stolen $8.5 million, and the amount owed in restitution has been reduced by money, cars, and jewelry seized by the federal government and the states from Marrell during the course of this investigation. Marrell pleaded guilty on January 11, 2023 to Mail Fraud, Wire Fraud, and Committing an Offense While On Bond. According to court records, the scheme began in 2014 and continued through April 2022. During that time, Marrell and other accomplices defrauded the Internal Revenue Service and the State Treasury Departments of Minnesota, Georgia, Maryland, Arizona, Connecticut, and Colorado, by filing 122 false and fictitious Income Tax Returns for Estates and Trusts and numerous state income tax returns, seeking over $13,690,341 from the IRS and $14,730,365 from the six states, by claiming bogus "refunds," to which neither she nor her accomplices were entitled. These federal and state income tax returns contained various false and material assertions of fact, most notably that the IRS and state taxing agencies had withheld large amounts of income tax from the trusts purportedly filing the returns, and that those trusts were therefore entitled to large refunds. In truth, however, the IRS and the state taxing agencies had withheld nothing from these trusts, and Marrell and her accomplices were entitled to no refund of any kind. Before discovering the fraud, the IRS paid out over $5,539,049 and the state agencies paid out a total of $2,972,588.93, all based on Marrell's spurious claims. Altogether, Marrell and her accomplices successfully caused the issuance of approximately $8,511,637.93 in fraudulent tax refunds. Marrell committed some of these offenses after she was arrested on a criminal complaint charging her with, among other things, making false claims to the IRS based on some of the conduct described above. Thus, even while Marrell was on bond, she continued to execute her scheme to defraud. "Ms. Marrell committed an astonishing amount of fraud against federal and state agencies. She also proved herself incorrigible, continuing her scams even after her initial arrest. We hope that today's sentence will deter both Ms. Marrell and anyone else who seeks to steal public funds for private gain." "Today's sentencing again emphasizes that the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Attorney's office will continue their aggressive pursuit of those who use fraudulent methods in an attempt to corrupt our nation's tax system," said Charles Miller, Acting Special Agent in Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation, Detroit Field Office. "Honest taxpayers have been reassured today that no one is above the law, especially when the integrity of tax administration is at stake." This case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation. It was prosecuted by AUSAs Craig Weier and Adriana Dydell of the United States Attorney's Office.
