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A Dominican national was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Boston for laundering close to $1 million in fraudulently obtained IRS refund checks using 11 different bank accounts at five different banks.
Francisco Oscar “Frank” Grullon, 52, was sentenced to 84 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of $1.6 million. Grullon will face deportation proceedings following the completion of his sentence. Following a six-day jury trial, Grullon was convicted in April of one count of conspiracy, 15 counts of theft or conversion of United States property and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Grullon was arrested in the Dominican Republic and extradited to the United States in 2018.
Grullon conspired with attorney R. David Cohen, who was convicted in 2016 for his role in the scheme to deposit and launder over 100 fraudulently obtained tax refund checks.
The checks were based on fraudulent tax returns with false W-2 information, usually using the name and Social Security number of a resident of Puerto Rico, where residents are not required to file federal income tax returns. Once the fraudulent returns were accepted by the IRS, refund checks were sent to addresses in Lawrence, East Boston and New York.
Grullon and his co-conspirators obtained and negotiated more than $1.6 million in fraudulent checks, including nearly $1 million in checks that were the product of fraudulent tax refunds, between October 2011 and November 2013.
Grullon and his co-conspirators deposited the checks into bank accounts in the name of a front company, AD Professional Association Inc., and in Cohen’s attorney client trust accounts. When questioned by bank officials about the suspicious quantity of U.S. Treasury checks, Grullon falsely claimed that he was depositing them as a favor for friends and that he had a check-cashing license.
After their bank accounts were closed by several banks, Grullon and Cohen later recruited a third co-conspirator and directed him to open accounts for AD Professional Association Inc., deposit more than $500,000 in treasury checks and make hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash withdrawals.
