Arthur Penn Sentenced to 4 Years in Tax Fraud Scheme

Arthur Leyon Penn, 39, of Monroeville, Alabama, was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison for orchestrating a sprawling tax fraud operation that ripped off the U.S. Treasury and betrayed the trust of hundreds of unwitting clients. Senior U.S. District Judge Callie V. S. Granade handed down the sentence after Penn pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated identity theft, crimes tied directly to the filing of fraudulent federal tax returns designed to inflate refunds through lies and stolen Social Security numbers.

Penn ran The Penn Agency LLC, a Monroeville-based business that dabbled in insurance but thrived on fraud. Alongside his wife, Oleavia Mitchell Penn, who operated a parallel scam at Quick Tax in Camden, Alabama, he built a criminal enterprise that trained employees to fabricate dependents, invent fake business incomes, and manipulate earnings to maximize the Earned Income Tax Credit. The scheme ran from 2011 to 2015, raking in illicit gains by exploiting the very system meant to help low-income taxpayers.

The indictment, handed down in January 2016 by a Federal Grand Jury in the Southern District of Alabama, exposed the mechanics of the fraud: Penn paid for and stole personal identification data, filed returns laced with falsehoods, and charged clients upfront fees before siphoning off portions of their federal refund checks. He didn’t just defraud the government—he stole from his own clients, pocketing chunks of refunds meant for struggling families.

On August 22, 2016, Arthur Penn pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated identity theft. That same day, his wife Oleavia entered a guilty plea on identical charges. But Penn’s criminal conduct didn’t stop there. Later that month, he was indicted on two counts of witness tampering after attempting to bribe a former employee at The Penn Agency to silence her testimony in the ongoing investigation.

On December 14, 2016, Penn admitted in court to trying to buy his way out of justice, pleading guilty to one count of witness tampering before Judge Granade. His sentencing on that charge is set for January 13, 2017, where he faces up to twenty additional years behind bars. Oleavia Penn’s sentencing in the tax fraud case is scheduled for March 15, 2017.

The investigation was led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation Division, and the 35th Judicial Circuit Task Force in Monroeville. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Sinan Kalayoglu and Greg Bordenkircher. The court also ordered Penn to pay $841,617.05 in restitution, face credit restrictions, serve a term of supervised release, and pay a $200 mandatory special assessment upon release.

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