{"id":30842,"date":"2026-05-27T11:18:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T11:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/27\/tax-preparer-sentenced-for-fraudulently-claiming-covid-funds-spent-5000-on-meth\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T11:18:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T11:18:24","slug":"tax-preparer-sentenced-for-fraudulently-claiming-covid-funds-spent-5000-on-meth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/27\/tax-preparer-sentenced-for-fraudulently-claiming-covid-funds-spent-5000-on-meth\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax preparer sentenced for fraudulently claiming covid funds spent $5,000 on meth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (KFVS) &#8211; Federal prosecutors say a Cape Girardeau man was sentenced to more than three years in jail after he pleaded guilty to fraudulently applying for pandemic loans and filing fake tax returns.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Myles Benjamin Depew, 35, of Cape Girardeau, was sentenced to 39 months is prison and ordered to pay $25,000 in restitution to the United States and $10,728 in restitution to the state of Missouri.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Depew pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Prosecutors say Depew used his job as a tax preparer to gain access to names, birthdates, and Social Security numbers that weren\u2019t his own. He then used the information to apply for two Economic Injury Disaster Loans totalling $25,000 in 2020. Depew then filed two false tax returns in Missouri that triggered refunds of $2,060 and $8,663 in the following years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration agents say Depew estimated that he gambled $40,000. spent $5,000 on food and another $5,000 on methamphetamine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><i>Copyright 2026 KFVS. All rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><br \/>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (KFVS) &#8211; Federal prosecutors say a Cape Girardeau man was sentenced to more than three years in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_animmysite_disable_animation":false,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/gray-kfvs12-prod.gtv-cdn.com\/resizer\/v2\/KSDRYX66ORCR5NRJNL4UKY66EI.jpg?auth=dfcce5535870b432dc16b25faf136689b00e474ba8d5f25bf8e08c0d5d37216b&width=1200&height=600&smart=true","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}