An inmate in a California prison has been charged with master-minding efforts to obtain $550 million in Employee Retention Credits. Inmate Kristopher Thomas also allegedly led a drug trafficking network that has seen 184 pounds of methamphetamine seized in several states.Thomas, 36 years old, went to prison in December 2010 after being convicted of a gang-related first-degree murder.
An investigation into the drug trafficking by the Drug Enforcement Agency that started in December led to the ERC investigation and brought in the Internal Revenue Service. Recorded calls on a prison-issued to tablet to romantic partners, family members and others are alleged to have contains messages involving drug peddling, while Thomas’ text allegedly had messages about tax fraud.
The ERC conspiracy lasted from January 2022 through at least July 2023 as Thomas and co-conspirators filed payroll tax returns claiming the ERCs for businesses not entitled to receive them.
These included fake business entities, actual businesses with overstated wages and numbers of employees, and businesses that were defunct when the payroll tax returns were filed.
Proceeds were used for personal expenditures. That included Thomas celebrating his birthday in December 2022 by paying for his family members and friends to be driven to Las Vegas from Los Angeles, party for the night at a luxury penthouse, and then fly back to Los Angeles on a private jet.
Also charged in the alleged ERC plot Thomas’s mother, Kettisha Thompson-Dozier, 55, and her spouse Charmane Dozier, 44, both of Waldorf, Md., and Sharon Vance, 36, of Hawthorne, Calif.
Five individuals are charged in the drug case, which is being prosecuted separately. Also seized in this case were 14 pounds of fentanyl, 9.5 pounds of heroin, and 8.5 pounds of cocaine with a half pound of fentanyl seized after being smuggled into the prison where Thomas is serving his sentence.
