Couple sentenced to prison for aiding tax scam

Former IRS employee Robert Steven, left, with his lawyer, at the U.S. District Courthouse in Greenbelt on June 25. Steven and his wife, Patricia, were sent to prison Monday for their part in helping Harriette Walters steal more than $48 million. (Examiner File)

A disgraced former Internal Revenue Service manager and his estranged wife were sent to prison Monday for their part in the largest taxpayer rip-off in District history.

Robert Steven was sentenced to 46 months in prison and his wife, Patricia, was given 70 months in prison for helping their friend, self-confessed tax scam mastermind Harriette Walters, pilfer more than $48 million through a series of phony property tax refunds.

The Stevens — Robert, 55, and Patricia, 73 — also were ordered to pay back more than $8.8 million by federal Judge Alexander Williams in his courtroom in Maryland.

The couple were key players in the tax scandal. The Stevens were decades-long friends with Walters, who helped them adopt their daughter, Stephanie, in the early 1980s. The Stevens formed a clothing company, named for Catholic saint Robert Bellarmine, that served as one of Walters’ numerous fronts during the decades-long scandal.

Patricia Steven and Walters met in the mid-1970s, when the Stevens lived in a Georgetown high-rise. Walters would turn to Patricia Steven from the early days of her scam, in the late 1980s, when she needed someone to launder the bogus checks.

Like most of the conspirators in the scheme, the Stevens lived large: They bought at least four Jaguars and an Edgewater town house and took numerous vacations in the Bahamas, prosecutors said. The Stevens would later separate, after Robert discovered that Patricia had lied about her age.

The scheme began unraveling last year, when Walters’ niece, Jayrece Turnbull, tried to run a bogus, six-figure check through a SunTrust bank at a suburban grocery store. A bank clerk got suspicious and began asking questions, questions that eventually led her to the D.C. inspector general.

Nearly a dozen people have since pleaded guilty in the scheme, including Walters herself.

The 52-year-old is scheduled to be sentenced in March. If a judge accepts her plea deal, she’ll serve between 15 and 18 years in prison.