Florida man nets erroneous $980,000 IRS refund, buys Lexus, gets busted

Freelancers’ finances tend to raise red flags with the Internal Revenue Service at tax time. But a Florida man who somehow managed to snag a $980,000 tax refund while classifying himself as freelance got more than an audit – though he could also get props for moxie.

Ramon Christopher Blanchett of Tampa eked out about $18,500 in earnings for 2016 but inexplicably was credited with $1 million in withholding.

Having confiscated the car and the bulk of the money, IRS is still after the 29-year-old alleged fraudster for the remaining $809, the amount of auto insurance he was refunded after losing the car to the feds.

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In February 2017 Blanchett did his own taxes, the Tampa Bay Times reported, filing electronically and listing his occupation as “freelancer.” He submitted several W-2 forms, one showing he earned $17,098 with $1 million of federal income tax withheld. The IRS duly issued the $980,000 refund, which Blanchett deposited at Sun Trust.

Sun Trust smelled fraud and froze the accounts, sending Blanchett a check. He opened a new account elsewhere, “falsely representing that the funds were from the estate of his deceased father,” the IRS states in a forfeiture complaint it filed in U.S. District Court in Tampa, and reported on by the Tampa Bay Times.

The feds finally caught up with him, but not before he’d opened several accounts by dividing the money up, and using $49,117 of it to buy a Lexus RC350.

That’s when the IRS took possession of the Lexus, the $919,251 that he had left, and started going after Blanchett’s auto insurance refund.

Despite all this, Blanchett has not been charged, the Tampa Bay Times noted, though fraud charges could be forthcoming.