U.S. authorities recently notified a Toronto-born Canadian living in Austin Texas was sentenced to 30 months in prison. The felon is reportedly addicted to casino games and tried to defraud the U.S. Treasury of nearly $1.8 million in tax refund cash by filing a duplicate, inflated refund request filed in the 2000s.

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According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the perpetrator's name is William Henry Woo, 67, from Toronto. As a Canadian citizen who wants to automatically withhold his gambling winnings, he reportedly submitted a duplicate and inflated refund request to the IRS Service Center in Austin, Texas. This happened from 2006 to 2010.

Wu successfully defrauded the U.S. Treasury Department of $1.8 million in tax refund cash. He pleaded guilty to two of the nine indictments filed against him in October 2022. He is currently serving a 30-month federal prison sentence, as well as paying back $1,771,011.67 for filing false statements about his income tax return.

Jaime Esparza, a U.S. attorney in western Texas, explained that Wu, who admitted to being addicted to gambling, has now lost his biggest bet. She said he was caught gambling to defraud the government. She also thanked the IRS for investigating the deceptive behavior of criminals and allowing the system to achieve justice.

In addition, U.S. authorities noted that they are also on high alert against bribery recipients like Wu. Ramsey Covington, a special agent for the IRS Houston field office, said the fraud scheme against the IRS would not be tolerated. As they say, stealing the nation's finances is like stealing from all Americans in the United States.

In addition, an IRS official commented that Woo's brother showed the seriousness of the crime. He also noted that as the fill season begins in 2023, IRS-CI special agents are committed to proposing to stop quickly and criminalize all frauds against the IRS. including tax schemes, reporting fraud, and stolen identity refund fraud.

In Canada, the state also covers a significant portion of gambling fraud attempts. In Quebec, for example, a former Roto Quebec employee would be sentenced to a one-year suspended prison term to serve the community. In 2020, he was caught attempting to cash in funds from players on Crown Company's online gaming platform.