Fort Lee Man Admits Role in $65M ID Theft Scheme

A Fort Lee man admitted this week to his role in one of the largest and longest running stolen identity refund fraud schemes ever identified in the United States, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Borough resident David Pinski, 75, and Michael Senatore, 43, of Moscow, Pa., pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and theft of government property. The scheme involved more than 8,000 fraudulent income tax returns seeking more than $65 in tax refunds.

“Pinski, Senatore and others obtained personal identifiers, such as dates of birth and Social Security numbers, belonging to Puerto Rican citizens,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement. “They used those identifiers to create fraudulent 1040 forms, which falsely reported wages purportedly earned by the ‘taxpayers’ and taxes purportedly withheld, to create the appearance that the ‘taxpayers’ were entitled to tax refunds.”

Investigators learned that only a handful of IP addresses were used to submit many of the fraudulent forms online, prosecutors said. Scammers then bought lists of addresses covered by a single mail carrier, applied for refunds and inserted addresses along the routes as the bogus taxpayers.

Hundreds of refund checks were mailed to only a few address in towns including Nutley, Somerset and Newark, according to prosecutors. In all, authorities intercepted more than $22 million in refund checks.

Pinski and Senatore could face up to 15 years in prison when they are sentenced in March, according to authorities. Similar scams cost the U.S. Treasury more than $2 billion annually.