Tax cheat to rat out Richland County ex-deputies

Maribel Crespo, the alleged mastermind of an income-tax scheme that allegedly involved former Richland County deputies, pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of preparing false state income tax returns.

Crespo, herself a former Richland County sheriff’s department employee, has agreed to testify against the deputies, said prosecutor Allen Myrick, a special assistant attorney general who prosecutes cases for the S.C. Department of Revenue.

“We have trials on the horizon, and we intend to call Ms. Crespo as a witness,” Myrick told state Judge Clifton Newman during a brief hearing at the Richland County courthouse.

Related charges against Crespo will be dropped, “provided she testifies truthfully,” Myrick said. She originally was charged with 11 counts of preparing a false tax return and faced a maximum of 55 years in prison.

After those trials, Crespo will be sentenced for one count of preparing a false tax return. For that, she faces a maximum sentence of five years.

Myrick said the former deputies benefited because Crespo had claimed false deductions for them, which gave them a bigger tax refund.

The deputies intend to fight the charges and claim that Crespo inserted the false deductions without their knowledge, Myrick told Newman.

Myrick added that prosecutors have additional evidence, and it won’t just be Crespo’s word against that of the deputies.

“Ms. Crespo takes full responsibility for her actions,” Crespo’s lawyer, Joy Middleton, told Newman during the hearing. Afterward, both Middleton and Crespo declined comment.

The arrests and firings of Crespo and the five deputies allegedly involved in the scheme saddened Sheriff Leon Lott when he announced them in 2014.

“We arrested our own this morning,” a disappointed Lott told reporters.

The deputies were later indicted by a Richland County grand jury on one count of making and assisting in a false tax return and one count of criminal conspiracy.

They are: Cedric Jacobs, Vivian Belton, Bobby Cohens, Valarie Gibson and Eddie Lee West.

During the hearing, Myrick described Crespo’s operation as a “conspiracy” between her and the deputies and said it had come to light entirely by accident.

In 2014, the Department of Homeland Security and the Richland County sheriff’s department were investigating Crespo for selling counterfeit goods, Myrick said.

As part of that investigation, law enforcement officers executed a search warrant on Crespo’s home and found “a file cabinet full of tax returns,” Myrick said.

When officers examined the tax returns, they found deputies’ names and evidence that Crespo was preparing fraudulent tax returns “as a side business,” Myrick said.

Lott had said he was galled that the officers turned to Crespo because she was a known crook. In 2010, while working as a judicial services officer for Lott’s department, she was arrested for identity theft and misconduct. Crespo was fired, had pleaded guilty to those charges and was on probation when she allegedly filed the tax returns for the deputies, Lott said.

Crespo also faces pending charges in federal court about the alleged counterfeiting scheme.

This story was originally published February 10, 2016 at 12:32 PM with the headline "Tax cheat to rat out Richland County ex-deputies."