Tucson man sentenced to 5 years in tax scheme

A Tucson man has been sentenced to five years in federal prison after pleading guilty to participating in a scheme that used the names of disabled people to file for income tax refunds. Forty-year-old Shelton DeWayne Tanner pleaded guilty last October to a conspiracy charge involving false claims, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

The U.S. attorney says Tanner and others used the stolen identities to claim more than $1 million in bogus tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service, resulting in the IRS paying out more than $300,000 in false refunds.