Date: Dec. 6, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Florence, SC — Troy Benjamin Bittner of Myrtle Beach, was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud and filing a false tax return. Evidence obtained in the investigation revealed that from November 2020 to December 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bittner was employed as a general manager at the Carolina Pines RV Resort in Conway. During that time, when it was not uncommon for guests to cancel reservations, he fraudulently generated $828,516.00 in customer refunds that were neither authorized nor requested by guests for completed reservations. After generating the fraudulent refunds, Bittner then wired the refunds to his personal bank accounts. Bittner also stole cash from the Carolina Pines RV Resort’s cloud-based point-of-sale system and documented it as refunds. In addition, in both 2020 and 2021, Bittner electronically filed with the IRS a Form 1040 in which he substantially understated his total income for calendar years 2020 and 2021, resulting in a total tax loss of $281,727.00. United States District Judge Joseph Dawson, III sentenced Bittner to 37 months' imprisonment, to be followed by a three-year term of court-ordered supervision. There is no parole in the federal system. Bittner was ordered to pay a total of $1,219,894.72 in restitution. On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by, among other methods, augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. This case was investigated by the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), the United States Secret Service, the United States Postal Inspection Service, and the FBI Columbia Field Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Hummel 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 more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
