Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 3, 1990                   TAG: 9006030135
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DANVILLE                                LENGTH: Short

ERRANT TAX REFUND TEMPTS 7-YEAR-OLD

But Lewis Conrad Smith III learned one of life's hard lessons: You can't keep what's not rightfully yours.

The 7-year-old boy's mother, Sheila Smith, said she was going through the mail Friday when she spotted what looked like the familiar IRS refund-check envelope.

"You can always tell it's a refund check by the way it looks on the outside," Smith said. "When Conrad received the check, I thought we had paid a little too much in taxes and we were getting back a small refund.

"I looked at the check, and at first thought it was a refund for something like $200. But I looked at it again and just couldn't believe the check was for the amount of $22,907."

Conrad asked if he could keep half the money, Smith said, but the youngster admits he first had other ideas.

"I would have loved to have kept all of it," Conrad said.

Nothing doing, Mom said.

"We're going to the Danville IRS office Monday to give them the check back," she said. "I want to give it back soon because you're afraid of losing something like this."

An IRS spokesman said anyone who cashes an accidentally issued refund check will have to pay back the money, with interest, when the mistake is discovered. The spokesman said computer error is one possible explanation for the mix-up.

"Anytime you have millions of tax refunds to process, something like this is bound to happen," the spokesman said.