Federal agents recently arrested a Troy woman on felony charges for allegedly stealing the identities of 800 people while working at an area hospital as part of a government tax fraud scheme.
According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the federal government recently returned a 22-count felony indictment against 41-year-old Angeline Austin involving a conspiracy to defraud the government and identity fraud.
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The indictments included allegations Austin conspired with other people to defraud the U.S. government while she worked with Southern Records Management Inc. at Troy Hospital, which is more commonly known as Troy Regional Medical Center.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Clark Morris called “greed” the motive to the conspiracy.
“They were using the IDs to file fraudulent tax returns and would fill out the tax return so that they would get a refund,” Morris said in an e-mail. “The refund would come on a debit card and they would get the money off the debit card.”
Morris declined to comment about any additional charges or arrests in the investigation. But she did say Austin has been released on bail.
“This is a large identity theft ring for this district,” Morris said. “Atlanta probably has much bigger ones, but for this district it is large.”
According to a U.S. Attorney’s Office statement, Austin allegedly used her position at the Troy hospital to obtain more than 800 names, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth of patients at the hospital. She then allegedly sold those identities to another person, who used them to prepare fraudulent tax returns that were then filed with the Internal Revenue Service. From those fraudulently prepared tax returns, Austin and others allegedly received fraudulent tax refunds.
The statement said conspirators used automated teller machines to get the refunds from prepaid debit cards. The indictment alleges that Austin would receive $1,500 for every 100 names she sold.
Some of the charges allege Austin exceeded her authorized access to the computer system at the hospital, and by doing so furthered the fraud of identity theft.
Some of the other charges allege computer fraud involving the identification of other people.
