A Chula Vista woman pleaded guilty March 9 to stealing $164,194 from the Internal Revenue Service in cashing fraudulent tax refund checks.
Cecilia Isabel Hernandez, 46, has agreed to pay all the funds back to the IRS, according to court records.
Hernandez faces up to 10 years in federal prison when she is sentenced on June 14 by U.S. District Court Judge
Anthony Battaglia in San Diego. She remains free on $25,000 bond.
Hernandez said she used the money to pay $33,000 in cash for a Chrysler 300, and $40,000 for a Quinceanera for her daughter in 2014, according to a tape recorded interview she had with an IRS special agent on July 22, 2015.
Hernandez wrote $525,743 in bad checks to the IRS in 2011, 2013, and 2014, according to the charges. She wrote those checks on closed bank accounts and she did so deliberately to trigger a fraudulent return.
The checks she wrote were for more than what she owed in taxes, so the IRS sent her refund checks before the agency realized her checks bounced after they were eventually deposited.
Hernandez admitted she knew the checks she wrote were on closed bank accounts. When an agent asked her why didn’t she send the tax refund money back, she said the money was already spent.
“It was used to pay off bills and pay whatever I needed to pay,” Hernandez was quoted as saying in the interview.
Hernandez also owes the IRS for back taxes, but a total amount was not disclosed in court records.
