Worker at Codman Square check-cashing place has to repay $1.8 million in fraudulent tax-return payments

A Charlestown woman was ordered today to repay the $1,836,862 in tax-refund checks the government says she cashed on the job at All Checks Cashed on Washington Street in a scheme involving purloined Puerto Rican social-security numbers.

Claudia Toribio, 35, will also have to spend six months in federal prison for her role in the scheme, to which she pleaded guilty earlier in the year, under the sentence handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin in Boston, the US Attorney's office reports.

According to an affidavit by an IRS agent in the case, Toribio and unnamed co-conspirators got the Social Security numbers of Puerto Rican residents, then made up bogus 1040 forms and related documents and got tax refunds. Puerto Rican numbers are popular in such schemes because its residents do not have to file federal taxes unless they move to the mainland - so people whose numbers are stolen likely won't even find out.

According to the IRS, Toribio cashed 287 fraudulent refund checks worth more than $1.8 million between March 2011 and Dec. 22, 2011, when she was questioned by her employers - the day after an IRS agent conducting a routine audit of the company's finances noticed an unusual number of refund checks cashed by her that year and and then notified the company.

In one case detailed by the agent, Toribio cashed a refund check for $6,425 made out to a woman who was allegedly living in Providence and working for a fancy restaurant in Newport, RI. In fact, the actual holder of the Social Security number used on the return was 75, was on Social Security and had never been to the mainland US, let alone worked for a restaurant in Newport.

According to the affidavit, Toribio used proceeds from the scheme to buy a Honda CRV a couple months before she was caught.