RIVERSIDE, California
Officials stated that a Riverside County man pleaded guilty Thursday to scheming to defraud the IRS out of more than $2.1 million by issuing fake W-2 forms.
William Mandel Musgrow also admitted to fraudulently obtaining nearly $1 million of COVID-19 economic relief loans.
Musgrow, 48, of Palm Springs, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of aiding and assisting in the preparation of a false tax return.
According to his plea agreement, Musgrow used one of his business entities to issue fraudulent IRS Forms W-2.
These forms misrepresented to the IRS that the recipients worked for the defendant’s various businesses, received pay, and had federal tax deducted from their paychecks.
In reality, however, the Forms W-2 either overstated the recipient’s income or were wholly fraudulent because the recipient either did not work for the company at all or had no federal income tax deducted from their paychecks.
Musgrow then helped the recipient file fraudulent federal income tax returns, using the bogus Forms W-2 to generate a tax refund to which the recipient was not entitled.
In total, Musgrow issued at least 87 fraudulent IRS Forms W-2 and assisted in filing at least 87 false income tax returns.
These returns requested a total of $2,769,600 in tax refunds, and the IRS paid out $2,136,630 of the requested refunds.
Separately, during the spring of 2020, Congress created federal programs to provide financial assistance to Americans suffering economic harm because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
From March 2020 to August 2020, Musgrow submitted 14 false and fraudulent applications to the United States Small Business Administration (SBA) and banks for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL).
In these applications, Musgrow made false statements,, including the number of employees to whom wages were paid, falsely certifying that the loan proceeds would be used for permissible business purposes and, in some cases, that the businesses were legitimate businesses when, in fact, they were not operating in any fashion and had no employees whatsoever.
In total, Musgrow submitted 14 fraudulent loan applications which requested more than $1.9 million. Relying on Musgrow’s false information, the SBA and lenders approved and funded many of the loans. Musgrow obtained approximately $970,000 in fraudulent proceeds.
U.S. District Judge Kenly Kiya Kato scheduled a Jan. 16 sentencing hearing.
At that time, Musgrow faces up to 20 years in federal prison for the wire fraud count and three years for the tax fraud count.
IRS Criminal Investigation is investigating this matter.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin J. Weir of the Riverside Branch Office prosecuted this case.