A Cape Girardeau tax preparer, Myles Benjamin Depew, was sentenced to 39 months in prison after federal prosecutors said he used other people’s identities to obtain pandemic disaster loans and then filed false Missouri tax returns that led to refunds.
For the better part of two years, Myles Benjamin Depew moved through other people’s financial details as if they were his own. Then federal prosecutors said the scheme caught up with him—enough to send him to prison, with the numbers laid out one after another.
Depew. 35. of Cape Girardeau. Missouri. was sentenced to 39 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to fraudulently applying for pandemic loans and filing fake tax returns. The court also ordered him to pay $25. 000 in restitution to the United States and $10. 728 in restitution to the state of Missouri.
The plea covered three counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.
Federal prosecutors said Depew used his job as a tax preparer to access names, birthdates, and Social Security numbers that weren’t his own. With that information, he applied for two Economic Injury Disaster Loans totaling $25,000 in 2020.
Prosecutors further said Depew then filed two false tax returns in Missouri. Those filings, they said, triggered refunds of $2,060 and $8,663 in the following years.
The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said Depew estimated that he gambled $40,000, spent $5,000 on food, and another $5,000 on methamphetamine.
Taken together, the case presents a clear through-line: access obtained through work, identities used to secure pandemic money, and returns used to pull additional refunds—an escalation that ended with a prison sentence and restitution meant to make the harmed sides whole.
Myles Benjamin Depew Cape Girardeau tax preparer wire fraud aggravated identity theft Economic Injury Disaster Loans covid fraud Missouri tax refunds restitution methamphetamine