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Ozark man sentenced to prison for Craigslist tax scheme

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An Ozark man was sentenced yesterday for filing a false income tax return after advertising on Craigslist to buy the identity information of children he would claim as dependents.

Raheem McClain, 37, was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison without parole and ordered to pay $23,883 in restitution, the majority of which would go to the IRS, according to a news release from the office of Tammy Dickinson, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

McClain pleaded guilty in April to filing false tax returns on behalf of himself and his girlfriend between Jan. 28, 2012, and Feb. 4, 2016. In the returns, McClain claimed dependents for which neither he nor his girlfriend were entitled.

For the 2011-13 tax years, McClain used personal information of three dependents of a woman he met on a dating website. For 2014, he falsely listed his grandmother as a dependent on his girlfriend’s tax return, according to the release.

In January 2015, he posted an ad on Craigslist saying he would pay $750 per dependent. For the 2014 calendar year, McClain listed three dependents from a woman who responded to his Craigslist ad. He used the same three dependents in various forms for other filings, as well.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Mohlhenrich and was investigated by IRS-Criminal Investigation and the Missouri Department of Revenue, according to the release.

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