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Aviva girls in tax trouble

February 26, 2010

Two words of advice, tax cheats: Shut Up!

Sure, you might be proud that you've filed bogus tax returns and haven't been caught yet, but here's a fact: the IRS can read the Internet. The two women accused of stealing from Des Moines insurer Aviva are just figuring this out, reports the Des Moines Register:

Marla Stevens once bragged about how she and her spouse, Phyllis, violated federal tax laws.

"We won't lie about our marriage on our tax forms, either, filing as the married people we are," Marla Stevens wrote on a blog in September 2005. "We've racked up about a million dollars in potential criminal fines and about a hundred years in potential prison time under the old sentencing guidelines between us - so far."

Well, now they know:

A federal grand jury has indicted the two women on five charges of income tax evasion and conspiracy, as well as filing false tax returns, U.S. Attorney Nicholas Klinefeld said in a news release Thursday.

In fairness, the charges probably have at least as much to do with their federal embezzlement problems as their incautious use of social media, but the point still holds. If you are dumb enough to commit tax fraud, you need to be smart enough to keep it to yourself. That may be a combination of dumb and smart that's hard to find.

Link: Copy of Indictment with tax charges

Tags: Aviva.Des Moines Register.Marla Stevens.Phyllis Stevens.tax crime.

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