Christina Moles, also known as Tina Lashley, 50, of Redkey, Indiana, has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to wire fraud and aiding and assisting the making of a false federal income tax return. U.S. District Judge James R. Sweeney II also ordered Moles to pay $567,010 in restitution.
According to court documents, between 2015 and 2021, Moles orchestrated a scheme to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by falsifying 382 federal income tax returns for numerous clients without their knowledge. During this period, Moles operated as a tax return preparer, often attracting customers with the promise of large guaranteed refunds. Many of her clients, despite having modest incomes, received refunds ranging from $5,000 to $10,000.
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The investigation revealed that Moles fraudulently claimed the American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC) on behalf of her clients to inflate their refunds. The AOTC is a credit for qualified education expenses for the first four years of higher education, with a maximum annual credit of $2,500 per eligible student. Eligibility for the AOTC requires the taxpayer (or a dependent) to have received a Form 1098-T, Tuition Statement, from an eligible educational institution.
Moles falsely stated on the tax returns that her clients had incurred educational expenses at either Ivy Tech or Penn Foster online college. In reality, none of these clients had any such expenses and did not attend either institution. Furthermore, neither Ivy Tech nor Penn Foster provided the necessary Form 1098-T statements that would have been required to legitimately claim the education credit.
As a result of Moles’s fraudulent actions, her clients received tax credits to which they were not entitled, leading the IRS to issue larger refunds than were warranted. This scheme caused a total loss to the IRS of approximately $567,010.
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“Due to the defendant’s deceit, the United States lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in unjustified refunds. Even more troubling, her unsuspecting customers faced the threat of audits and the repayment of thousands of dollars they wrongly received, all because they trusted her business practices,” stated Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, John E. Childress. “Filing or preparing false tax returns is a serious offense that deprives the government of vital revenue for public services, and today’s sentence serves as a strong warning to anyone considering engaging in such fraudulent activity.”
Ramsey E. Covington, Acting Special Agent in Charge, IRS Criminal Investigation, Chicago Field Office, added, “Christina Moles exploited a tax credit designed to ease the burden of higher education—twisting it into a tool for fraud. Her deceit didn’t just cheat the system; it undermined a benefit intended to help families invest in their futures. When trust is traded for profit, everyone pays the price.”
The case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) and the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS).
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