A bookkeeper convicted in an infamous, Southern California-based con game that unsuccessfully attempted to swindle more than $225 million in false income tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has lost her appeal to overturn her case or win a new trial.
In her role in the conspiracy involving more than 50 individuals and Old Quest Foundation, Sandra Kay Lynch specifically participated in schemes to dupe the IRS out of nearly $750,000.
But Lynch told U.S. District Court Judge Josephine L. Staton that the guilty verdicts should be tossed out because the government didn't produce sufficient, 2013 trial evidence to convict her or that she should receive a new trial because the first one unfairly excluded exculpatory evidence.
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But Staton ruled this month that federal prosecutors presented “extensive” evidence that justified the jury's findings and specifically that Lynch continued to participate in the filing of false income refund requests even after the IRS notified her and her clients that such acts were illegal.
Testimony also established that Lynch advised at least one person to lie about her role in the preparation of his income tax filing, Staton noted.
Lynch's exculpatory evidence claim, one raised and rejected during the trial, didn't impress the judge either.
She closed the case.
OC Weekly covered the origins of the scam in THIS news article.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.