Russian man accused of income-tax fraud

7:40 p.m. April 30, 2009

SAN DIEGO – A Russian citizen has been arrested and accused of conspiring to divert 65 income-tax refund payments intended for U.S. citizens to accounts he set up at four San Diego banks, federal authorities said Thursday.

Maxim Maltsev, 23, of Novosibirsk, Russia, was arrested Wednesday when he arrived in the U.S. at Los Angeles International Airport, said U.S. Attorney Karen P. Hewitt of San Diego.

He was being held in Los Angeles without bail pending hearings on his transfer to San Diego.

Maltsev, who lived in San Diego for several months in 2006, was charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. in a sealed indictment issued April 16 by a federal grand jury in San Diego. The indictment was unsealed when Maltsev appeared Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles.

According to the indictment, Maltsev and co-conspirators set up free online tax-return filing services that were falsely advertised as being affiliated with the Internal Revenue Service. When citizens filed income-tax returns on the site, their bank account numbers were changed and the refunds were diverted to accounts opened by the co-conspirators.

The diverted refunds totalled about $105,000, Hewitt said. The money was withdrawn by debit and check cards and at ATMS in the U.S. and overseas, Hewitt said.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/ ... ndex=91765