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Bristol woman sentenced to 5 years for IRS impersonation scam

HARTFORD — Federal prosecutors said a Bristol woman was sentenced to five years for an IRS impersonation scam. Nancy J. Frye, 51, of Bristol, was sentence...
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HARTFORD — Federal prosecutors said a Bristol woman was sentenced to five years for an IRS impersonation scam.

Nancy J. Frye, 51, of Bristol, was sentenced  in Hartford to 60 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for her involvement in an IRS impersonation scam that defrauded hundreds of victims in the United States and Canada.

Officials said the scam involves people who say they are employees of the IRS to obtain money from victims. The perpetrators make unsolicited  calls to people saying they are IRS agents or officers  of the IRS. The impersonator tells the recipient they have an outstanding debt with the IRS that must be paid immediately and  threatens persons with either arrest or a lawsuit if they do not immediately settle the bogus IRS debt. “Victims are instructed to wire money to individuals they believe are employees of the IRS in order to avoid the threatened action,” said Tom Carson
Public Information Office for the United States Attorney District of Connecticut.

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Officials said in October 2015, “Frye received phone calls and text messages from individuals who successfully recruited her to pick up money that was wired through MoneyGram and Western Union and to deposit the money into specific bank accounts. Frye, in turn, recruited Douglas Martin and others to assist her in picking up wired funds from locations in central Connecticut. FRYE then deposited the money that she collected into the bank accounts.”

They went in to say, “Between October 2015 and June 2016, Frye, and others working at her direction, received approximately $588,000 in wired funds from approximately 574 victims.
Judge Bryant ordered Frye to pay restitution in the amount of $585,321. Frye and Martin were arrested on September 15, 2016.”

In June, Frye pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Martin pleaded guilty to the same charge and, on November 2,  was sentenced to 41 months of imprisonment.
Frye was ordered to report to prison on January 8, 2018.

Since October 2013, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has received reports of more than 2.1 million impersonation related calls with more than 12,400 victims reporting losses of approximately $62 million.

People who receive impersonation calls, including those who have been victimized by this scheme, are asked to report the information at https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/contact_report_scam.shtml.

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