Making a simple mistake in your genealogy research is understandable, and generally harmless. However, intentionally doing genealogy wrong, in an effort to illegally make money for yourself, can result in a prison sentence. That’s exactly what happened to a women who was filing false tax returns with information she found while doing genealogy research.
In April of this year, Shannon Kathlina Grimm, who lives in Montana, decided to do some genealogy research. The problem was, she wasn’t searching for information about her own ancestors. She also wasn’t helping other people fill in their family trees.
Instead, Ms. Grimm was looking for Social Security numbers and birth dates of people who were deceased. She used that information to file false tax returns. In other words, she was committing tax fraud. This is the wrong way to do genealogy!
First, she would find the Social Security number of someone who was deceased and who was the head of a household. After finding someone who fit that criteria, she would add as many dependents as she could find information for to the false tax return. The purpose was so Ms. Grimm would get as much money as possible. By the time she was caught, she had filed over 90 false returns and received $129,498 in refunds.
This week, Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull decided that Ms. Grimm deserved more time than she had already spent in prison while her case was pending. He sentenced her to four years and three months, (which was at the high end of the guideline range for this type of crime). The judge also ordered her to pay back the IRS for the $129,498.
The judge noted that Ms. Grimm had a state conviction for issuing bad checks, and her violation of a deferred sentence. He also noted that she was on probation at the time that she committed the federal tax fraud crimes. These previous behaviors and decisions make it clear that the false tax returns she filed were not the first time Ms. Grimm had done something illegal involving money.
In the past, there has been some concern that people would use the Social Security Death Index in order to commit fraud (such as in the way that Ms. Grimm had). That is one of the reasons why some genealogy websites have removed information that shows Social Security numbers from the data that can be easily accessed by genealogists. So far, I’ve not heard of anyone other than Ms. Grimm using genealogy research to commit fraud.
Image by Andrew Bardwell on Flickr