DALLAS—Three individuals have been arrested on an indictment, unsealed on Friday, charging one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering stemming from their scheme to steal personal identifying information, use it to fraudulently obtain income tax refunds, and then launder those funds, announced John Parker, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas.

Latonya Lanette Carson, 41, Ricardo Garth Solomon, 49, and Smith Olsola Akin, 32, have made their initial appearances in federal court and each remains in custody. A detention hearing is set for this afternoon for Carson. Another defendant, Segun Edomwonyi, a/k/a “Benny O. Prince,” 49, has not been apprehended.

The indictment alleges that the defendants’ scheme began in 2010. They allegedly obtained stolen names and other personal identifying information and used that information to create fraudulent tax returns claiming fraudulent refunds. They electronically filed the fraudulent returns with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and directed the refunds to be deposited onto reloadable debit cards they had purchased and registered online in the names of the identity victims. The defendants then used these debit cards, funded by the fraudulent income tax refunds, to obtain cash and purchase used cars from wholesale dealers in Dallas County.

Over the course of the conspiracy, according to the indictment, the defendants established several bank accounts in the names of businesses that purportedly operated as used car businesses. Nearly 2000 money orders and checks, purchased in part with the proceeds from the fraudulently filed income tax returns, were deposited into these accounts.

The indictment alleges that between May 2012 and May 2014, the defendants and their conspirators paid $1,184,950 from these accounts to purchase used cars from wholesale dealer auctions in Dallas County, and that between January 2012 and January 2015, the defendants and their conspirators exported approximately 204 used cars to Nigeria.

The FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), U.S. Secret Service and the Texas Department of Public Safety investigated. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Stokes is in charge of the prosecution.