The Canada Revenue Agency has announced that Kamloops resident Gary William Mechar was sentenced on January 14, 2013 to four years imprisonment and ordered to pay $276,655 in restitution to two financial institutions.
Mechar pleaded guilty in the British Columbia Supreme Court in Kamloops on October 15, 2012, to one count of attempting to obtain fraudulent refunds on his 2000 to 2005 personal income tax returns; two counts of attempting to defraud two financial institutions; and one count of attempting to obtain fraudulent refunds on the 2004 and 2005 personal income tax returns of John Lovric.
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A CRA investigation revealed that Gary William Mechar sought to obtain $1,016,054 in fraudulent income tax refunds. It was also determined that Mechar did by deceit, falsehood or other fraudulent means attempt to defraud two financial institutions of $378,593. Mechar did so by creating several false identities, writing letters under various names to government agencies, in order to obtain identity documents originally issued to children who died at an early age. Mechar then used the fraudulent identities to open a number of bank and credit card accounts.
The tax fraud attempted by Mechar was not an attempt to evade taxes but rather sought to obtain fraudulent refunds. Mechar told the CRA he owed little or no income tax on his seemingly high salary because he had business losses which offset his earnings. Mechar did so by filing returns claiming that his income was higher than it appeared, and that most of the income had been withheld as taxes by his employer, Trucore Associates (Trucore). Mechar, it was determined, was the true principal of Trucore, concealing his identity by using another name.
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The tax fraud was an attempt to exploit the source deduction system by claiming that Trucore had withheld a very high percentage of his salary over a number of years, and that he was therefore entitled to refunds. While Trucore had never remitted these alleged amounts, this would be an issue between Trucore and the CRA which wouldn’t concern Mechar.
On September 12, 2012, a related party to the attempt to obtain fraudulent refunds, John Jure Lovric, pleaded guilty to one count of fraud. On October 15, 2012, Lovric received a Conditional Sentence Order of 18 months, including 40 hours of community service.