NORCROSS — A federal jury last week found a Norcross man guilty of stealing government money and laundering more than $400,000 in fraudulent tax refunds tied to stolen identities.
What happened: 41-year-old Festus Anyiam was convicted June 5 on four counts of theft of government funds and one count of money laundering. The scheme goes back to 2015, when someone filed fake tax returns using the stolen personal information of taxpayers in Illinois and Missouri.
How it worked: The fake returns told the IRS to send refund payments to a third-party tax preparation software company, which loaded the money onto prepaid debit cards. Those debit cards had been set up using the same stolen taxpayer information. The cards were then used to buy money orders at retail stores around Atlanta…