Prison Ordered for Orange Man in Tax Fraud

A federal judge in Los Angeles sentenced an Orange man Wednesday to 50 months in prison for scheming with his son to defraud the government of more than $50,000 by collecting refund checks on fraudulent income tax returns.

Lelas Charles Gentry, 56, who was convicted in September of the tax fraud conspiracy, was also ordered to pay joint restitution with his son of $53,275.

Gentry’s 29-year-old son, Todd Allen Gentry, is serving a 34-month sentence after pleading guilty to the same crime in July.

Between late 1989 and mid-1990, father and son filed more than 620 false income tax returns seeking to get about $730,000 in refunds. They received about $53,000 in fraudulent refunds before the scheme was uncovered and they were arrested, authorities said.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Rebecca S. Dewees, who prosecuted the case, said that the Gentrys scanned the obituary columns of newspapers and checked death records at the county recorder’s office to get the names and Social Security numbers of dead people.

Using that information, Lelas Gentry prepared false income tax forms and filed claims with the Internal Revenue Service, according to Dewees.

Lelas Gentry, who owns two check-cashing businesses in Fullerton, cashed some of the tax refunds at his businesses. To cash other tax refund checks, Todd Gentry obtained false driver’s licenses under several of the decedents’ names and used them to open bank accounts, Dewees said.

The Gentrys chose mostly young, single people because it was less likely that someone would have filed a final tax return for them, Dewees said. Such returns inform the IRS that the taxpayer has died.

IRS agents began investigating the Gentrys when the federal processing office in Fresno noticed that several refund checks were being mailed to the same 10 post office boxes, which were opened by Todd Gentry under an alias, Dewees said.