By SDCN Staff
A Georgia man was sentenced in Nevada on Wednesday to 18 months in prison for participating in an identity theft conspiracy, federal prosecutors said.
Melvin Orellana of Rome, Georgia, was a computer support employee for a company that provided tax software to return preparation businesses throughout the United States.
King Isaac Umoren operated Universal Tax Services, a Las Vegas-based tax preparation firm that used the tax software from Orellana’s company. From approximately May 2016 through Nov. 2017, Orellana conspired with Umoren to steal and transfer taxpayer and personal identifying information from the tax software business. Umoren sought this taxpayer information to falsely inflate the tax service’s client base in an effort to fraudulently sell the company to an unsuspecting buyer. In exchange for the stolen taxpayer data, Umoren agreed to pay Orellana $20,000 after the company was sold. In Aug. 2017, Orellana provided to Umoren taxpayer data for approximately 12,000 taxpayers whose returns were prepared by businesses using the tax software. In Nov. 2017, Umoren used this taxpayer data to fraudulently sell the company for $6.7 million.
In addition to the term of imprisonment, U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon for the U.S. District Court of Nevada ordered Orellana to serve three years of supervised release.
