Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 22, 1995 TAG: 9502220089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``He cooperated with us all along, and we expected him to plead guilty,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson said of James C. Blankenship, 37, of Pulaski County.
Blankenship will be a government witness at the trial of the other defendants scheduled to start April 3, Sorenson said.
The 28-count indictment unsealed in January charged Blankenship, 10 other inmates and three women not in prison with conspiring to defraud the IRS.
Sorensen said when the indictment was announced that the government had evidence Blankenship got the idea for the conspiracy when two inmates taking a tax course at Wytheville Community College asked him for help with their homework.
According to the indictment, one of the two inmates, Ernest ``Wes'' Garraghty, is accused of getting his mother, Shirley M. Garraghty of Ferrum, and his sister, Tammy Moran of Roanoke, to operate a Goodview post office box as a mail drop.
Early in 1993, the indictment says, Moran and several inmates supplied Blankenship with a pile of Internal Revenue Service W-2 forms. Blankenship used identification numbers of former employers and Social Security numbers and names of other inmates to file 35 false tax returns.
The returns were sent first to the post office box, and then on to the IRS in Philadelphia, the indictment says. Sorenson said the scheme was discovered when many returns were sent to the post office box at once.
The IRS paid a total of $27,860 in tax refunds before the scam was found.
Blankenship faces a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
by CNB