Former Chehalis Woman Sentenced in Federal Court for Filing Fraudulent Tax Returns

Posted

A former Chehalis woman, who was convicted of multiple counts of forgery, theft and fraud in 2010 in Lewis County Superior Court, has been sentenced in federal court after pleading guilty to wire fraud.

Angela Bostwick was sentenced Monday to one year and one day in prison followed by three years of supervised probation.

According to court documents, between 2007 and 2009, Bostwick filed seven fraudulent tax returns under three different identities belonging to people she knew. She got the Social Security numbers of the three people and created fake W-2 forms, and then filed false tax returns based on the W-2 forms claiming a total of $60,084. The Internal Revenue Service paid Bostwick $10,781 based on two of the claims.

Bostwick filed all of the forms electronically, including one filed from Chehalis. Each filing caused an interstate wire transmission from the Western District of Washington to an IRS computer outside of the district.

If Bostwick hadn’t taken a plea agreement, she would have faced aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory sentence of two years in prison. While the sentencing range for Bostwick’s crime was 27 to 33 months, the lesser sentence was recommended because she has served some of the time while in custody for other crimes.

Essentially, the government recommended a sentence of one year and one day because it is the equivalent of a longer sentence that would have been served partially concurrent to another sentence.

According to court documents, Bostwick has been convicted in nine different fraud cases.

In 2010 she admitted to swindling her parents, husband, friends and neighbors out of thousands of dollars to finance a gambling habit. A Lewis County Superior Court judge sentenced her to 10 years in prison.