Former Denver woman is sentenced to 12 months in federal prison for tax, visa and social security fraud

DENVER — A woman formerly of Denver, Colorado, was sentenced last week to serve 12 months in federal prison for tax fraud, visa fraud and social security fraud, federal authorities announced. 

This case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Criminal Investigation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Bureau of Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), and Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General (SSA OIG).

Following her prison sentence, Libia Hernandez-Garcia, 60, of Miami, Florida, was also ordered to serve three years on supervised release and ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Christine M. Arguello to pay more than $70,000 in restitution.  She was ordered to report to a Bureau of Prisons facility within 15 days of designation.  She was indicted by a federal grand jury May 21, 2013, followed by a superseding indictment Feb. 25, 2014.  She pleaded guilty to the charges before Judge Arguello May 22.

According to the charging documents as well as the stipulated facts contained in the plea agreement, from 2009 through 2011, Hernandez-Garcia made false claims against the IRS which she knew to be false by preparing and filing federal income tax returns for several individuals where the claims for income tax refunds were fraudulent.  Particularly, Hernandez-Garcia provided false information to a tax preparer, so refunds not belonging to her were deposited into her own bank account.

From 2009 through 2012, Hernandez-Garcia misused the Social Security Number (SSN) of several individuals by causing the filing of individual income tax returns which falsely included the name and SSN, as a dependent, for the person identified as the filer of the tax return.

From 2008 through 2011, Hernandez-Garcia assisted in preparing and filing with the IRS the U.S. Individual Income Tax Return of her husband for tax years 2007 through 2010, which were materially false and fraudulent. Particularly, dependents were claimed on her husband’s tax returns when in fact the dependents were not a person who could lawfully be claimed as a dependent of his.  On her own personal tax returns for tax years 2006 through 2011, Hernandez-Garcia followed a similar pattern claiming dependents that could not be claimed as her dependents all in an effort to receive higher refunds.

Furthermore, on two separate occasions, one in 2008 and the second in 2011, Hernandez-Garcia made false statements under penalty of perjury in Petitions for a Nonimmigrant Worker packages.  Such false statements included: the beneficiary of the H-1B visa petition, Diana Aleph Aguilar Hernandez, was employed by a local hotel operating under a national brand name as Operations Manager; Libia Hernandez was an authorized official to make such a petition on behalf of that hotel; that Libia Hernandez was authorized by that hotel to act on behalf of the company in labor certification matters.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Brown, District of Colorado.