WASHINGTON – Andrew Isaac Chance of Clinton, Md., was convicted of filing a false retaliatory lien against a federal prosecutor and for filing three false claims for income tax refunds, the Justice Department, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) announced today. U.S. District Judge for the District of Maryland Alexander Williams Jr. presided over the federal jury trial in Greenbelt, Md.
According to testimony and evidence presented at trial, Chance was convicted in 2007 for filing a false claim for an income tax refund for the tax year 2005. Shortly after he was released from prison for that crime, he filed a UCC Financing Statement with the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation, falsely claiming that the federal prosecutor, who prosecuted the 2007 case, owed him $1.313 billion. The evidence showed that Chance filed a similar lien against a Maryland state prosecutor for her role in prosecuting him for crimes relating to his attempts to cash the fraudulently obtained U.S. Treasury check for the 2005 tax return. According to the evidence, Chance admitted to a federal agent, when arrested in December 2010 in relation to the current indictment, that he had filed the liens because the prosecutors had “done him wrong.”
The evidence at trial established that a year after filing the false lien, Chance filed three false claims for tax refunds for tax years 2007, 2008 and 2009, seeking a total of $900,000. These three false tax returns were almost identical to the 2005 return for which he was previously convicted. On the 2005 tax return, Chance claimed he was the Andrew Chance Trust. On the 2007-2009 returns, he claimed he was the Andrew I Chance Trust. On each return in the current case, Chance claimed $300,000 in refunds based on completely false income and withholding amounts. The government introduced evidence that, despite having claimed withholdings on the false returns, Chance had no withholdings and, in fact, had demanded that Metro, from which he retired as a station manager in 1999, not withhold taxes from his retirement pay.
“This verdict is a clear message that filing false retaliatory liens against federal officials, including federal prosecutors who are simply doing their jobs, is illegal and will be punished,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Ronald A. Cimino of the Justice Department’s Tax Division.
Chance was on federal supervised release and state probation at the time of the conduct giving rise to this indictment. He still faces court actions related to those release violations.
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