GRIFFIN, Ga. — The Georgia Department of Revenue confirms it’s reviewing 1,400 potentially fraudulent returns filed by a Spalding County tax business, as the families of firefighters appear to make up a large portion of the victim pool.
In recent weeks, Channel 2 Action News began receiving complaints from Spalding County families who are being audited by the state.
They said they'd used the services of Kim Griffin’s Tax Time business in the city of Griffin. Several identified connections to local fire departments, owing as much as $10,000 in state returns.
Hannah Wambles said her husband’s firefighter co-workers alerted the couple to likely trouble with the Georgia Department of Revenue in December, just as the couple was trying to contact Griffin for 2018 filing.
"My husband just came to me and said, 'I just found this out. She's being investigated for tax fraud,'" Wambles told Channel 2 investigative reporter Nicole Carr. "Everyone that used her is going to be audited, investigated, but we don't know when. It could be tomorrow. It could be several months."
The couple had been referred to Griffin by colleagues and filed their first joint return as newlyweds in 2017. Griffin, they said, would tout knowledge of write-offs for firefighter professionals.
By March, they were being audited by the state.
Another notice came in June, and the couple has been working with the state to repay nearly $2,000 from the 2017 return. Wambles said the upside is that the state has not been charging penalties.
In a statement, the Georgia Department of Revenue stressed its willingness to work with taxpayers.
“Everything falls back on us and all these other people,” Wambles said. “It’s incredibly frustrating.”
“In the case of Tax Time, the Department is still reviewing the 1,400 returns we believe to be fraudulent. The Department of Revenue is helping these taxpayers get back into compliance, which unfortunately, oftentimes includes the repayment of unearned tax returns,” the statement reads. “It is important to remember a taxpayer is ultimately responsible for the information on their return and if a refund seems out of the ordinary or too good to be true, it probably is.”
“The biggest thing is: At the end of the day, we are responsible because we hired her and we signed those tax returns,” said Wambles. “We hired her because we know nothing about taxes.”
A quick search of the Channel 2 archives showed Tax Time at the center of a statewide fraud investigation in April.
That’s when one of Griffin’s colleagues was arrested after DOR agents caught her on tape, allegedly fabricating $8,000 worth of returns for an undercover agent.
[READ MORE: Agents raid tax prep offices across state to combat fake returns]
Griffin was not there during the raid, and neither the state nor former clients have reached her in recent months.
The state confirms she’s been blocked from filing returns in Georgia.
Carr visited Tax Time on Thursday, after learning Griffin might be holding office hours. A neighboring business owner asked what the news crew was there for and informed Carr that Griffin would be in later that day.
Carr couldn’t reach Griffin at home or by phone but the business card left on Thursday had been taken out of the Tax Time door by Monday afternoon.
“She knows what she’s done and I think, I hope, justice will be served,” said Wambles.
Cox Media Group
