|
FABIAN Muyaba — the holder of Zimbabwe’s 100m record for the last 17 years has been jailed for 10 years in the United States for defrauding the US government.
A statement from the US Attorney for the Northern District of Texas said Muyaba, Joseph Mudekunye and Nichelle Henson, of Como, Texas, were convicted in June on various offenses related to a conspiracy scheme in which they profited.
Muyaba received a 10-year prison sentence. He testified to being the 100-metre record holder for his country and a former Olympic athlete.
Mudekunye was sentenced to eight years and one month and was ordered to pay back US$422 000. Henson was sentenced to four years.
Muyaba is a former Zimbabwe Republic Police Athletics Club sprinter who, way back in 1990, raced into the history books of local athletics, when he ran the fastest 100m by a Zimbabwean.
That historic feat was achieved in June 1990 when Muyaba, then a 20-year-old, romped home first in the 100m event at the Chibuku International Track and Field Championships at the National Sports Stadium in Gaborone, Botswana.
Muyaba clocked an incredible 10,15 seconds, 0,01s faster than the national record set by the legendary “Mhangura Meteor” Artwell Mandaza, 21 years earlier in 1969. Muyaba’s equalled his own record on May 16 1993 in Knoxville, Tennessee in the United States, when he ran 10.15s.
Muyaba represented the country at the Olympics in Seoul (1988) and Barcelona (1992). He later moved to the United States in 1991 on an athletics scholarship. He hung his spikes in 1996 due to a nagging Achilles tendon injury.
The athlete, who was last in the country in November last year told the media then that he had come to set up a transport company. He founded the Countrywide Financial Corporation in Dallas where he was based. He is married to a Zambian has a two-year- old son.
Muyaba, Mudekunye and Henson were convicted on June 26 on various offenses related to a conspiracy to defraud the U.S government by preparing and filing false and fraudulent income tax returns, and profiting from those filings.
Mudekunye – a Zimbabwean was convicted on three counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation and presentation of false and fraudulent income tax returns and two counts of using a means of identification of another to commit a federal offense.
Muyaba and Henson were each convicted on six counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation and presentation of false and fraudulent income tax returns.
The government presented evidence at trial that the defendants, who worked as tax preparers at Reliable Express Tax Service and Reliable Professional Tax Service, at 9203 Skillman Street in Dallas, and two of whom also worked at Efficient Tax Service and/or Proficient Tax Services LLC, conspired together to prepare and file Internal Revenue Service (IRS) individual tax returns, forms 1040 and 1040A, which were false and fraudulent.
In addition, the defendants profited from these fraudulent filings. Another object of their conspiracy was to obtain additional clients by generating favorable word-of-mouth advertising from clients who received unexpected refunds.
The government presented further evidence that the defendants willfully and fraudulently reduced the amount of tax that was due to the IRS for their clients by falsely claiming: head of household status, dependents, business expenses, education credits, earned income credit and federal telephone excise tax credits.
In some instances, Mudekunye unlawfully used the name and Social Security Number of another person to falsely claim those individuals as dependents of some taxpayers. For their services, the defendants collected substantial cash payments from clients for the return preparation, some clients paying up to $1900 for the preparation of a simple Form 1040 or 1040A.
The defendants concealed the fact from their clients that they deducted substantial fees from the clients’ Refund Anticipation Loan checks. In addition, the government presented evidence that the defendants submitted returns using others’ electronic filer identification numbers, rather than their own, to prevent the conspiracy from being discovered.
BY FANUEL VIRIRI
 |
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form