Sacramento woman pleads guilty to made-up jobs and fake W-2s in tax fraud scheme
A Sacramento County woman pleaded guilty on Thursday to filing nearly $6 million worth of false tax returns on behalf of herself and an associate, using fake social security numbers and claiming to have held jobs that did not exist.
Latasha Clarion Williamson, 37, falsely said she held jobs at Walmart, the video game maker Epic Games, a German chemical giant and other firms, using multiple Social Security numbers and listing her own address as the corporate headquarters, her plea agreement said.
She appeared in federal court in Sacramento wearing long braids and a blazer over baggy pants. She spoke quietly and responded mostly with one-word answers when U.S. District Judge Daniel Calabretta asked her questions about her plea.
“Guilty,” she repeated four times, as each of the counts of filing a false claim against the federal government was read aloud in court.
Prosecutors charged Williamson last month in the case, alleging that she filed claims worth about $5.6 million on her own behalf and another $203,039 for an associate. Total losses to the government were calculated at more than $8 million, although the four counts to which she pleaded guilty resulted in payouts of about $1.5 million to Williamson and the associate, the plea agreement said.
Prosecutors said that the scheme began in 2020, when Williamson filed a claim for herself as if she had worked for Walmart the year before. Williamson had been an employee of the retail giant, but she stopped working there in 2018, the plea agreement said.
The next year, she began reporting earnings from Henkel, a German conglomerate that makes hair-care products, laundry detergents, industrial adhesives and other products, for which she had never worked. She also filed a return claiming she had worked for Henkel 1988, a company that does not exist, the plea agreement said.
By 2023, she was filing claims for several associates, falsely reporting that they worked for Epic Games, a North Carolina company that produces well-known interactive games including Fortnite. To make the fake employment seem real, she also filed false W-2 forms in her own name and those of her associates with the Social Security Administration, the plea agreement said.
She used the correct employer ID of the company, but provided her own address and telephone number for the company on the forms.
“Epic Games Inc., never employed Williamson nor any of her associates, and Williamson was aware that neither she nor her associates were entitled to the refunds they requested from the IRS,” the plea agreement said.
Williamson faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of the four counts to which she pleaded guilty.
However, Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Harman said in court that her estimated sentence based on such factors as prior criminal history and her cooperation in the case would likely lead to a shorter term of 37 to 46 months. The government would seek a term at the lower end of that range, he said.
Williamson was scheduled to be sentenced in Calabretta’s court on June 4. She was released on her own recognizance on Nov. 18 and remains out of custody pending sentencing.
