By Staff
LANSING - Attorney General Mike Cox announced Feb. 8 that his office has charged seven people with the felony of conducting a criminal enterprise for attempting to cheat the State of Michigan out of more than $1 million by filing false homestead property tax claims.
Each defendant faces 20 years in prison.
The alleged scheme involved completing tax claim forms with false information, including fake addresses.
The defendants then filed change of address forms at the post office so that when checks were issued by the Department of Treasury, they would be forwarded to a post office box established by the defendants.
Their efforts were discovered when a postal clerk recognized the addresses as being non-existent and saw that mail to those addresses was all being forwarded to the same post office box.
The case, which spanned a year, resulted from work by the Michigan State Police Major Case Team in coordination with Attorney General investigators.
Those charged include: Dale Morris, 42, an inmate in a state correctional facility; David Buillard, 42, of Inkster; Richard Custard, 34, an inmate in a state correctional facility; Sherry Drake, 42, of Ferndale; Linda Custard, 56, of Detroit; Darieus Moye, 26, an inmate in a state correctional facility; and Mary Ann Moye, 52, of Doerun, Ga.
All seven defendants have been arraigned in Sault Sainte Marie's 91st District Court and face preliminary examination Feb. 15.