By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

LAPLACE – An Ama accountant and her husband, a former St. Charles Parish sheriff’s deputy, were sentenced in U.S. District Court after pleading guilty to charges stemming from a scam to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars by filing false tax returns, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Tamara Scott-Landry, 37, was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier. Her husband, Warren S. LeBeauf Jr., 42, a former lieutenant in the St. Charles Sheriff’s Office, was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

According to court documents, the two admitted to filing false and fraudulent tax returns in 2005 and 2006 using the names of prison inmates. At the time of the incidents, Scott-Landry worked as a tax preparer under the name Scott’s Accounting Services, while LeBeauf was an employee of the St. Charles Sheriff’s Office who had access to inmates’ personal information through a computer terminal at the parish’s 911 call center.

According to the release, LeBeauf requested and collected the names, birthdates, Social Security numbers and other personal information of several inmates to be used on false tax returns. The release said LeBeauf obtained 4,000 pages of information about inmates from a communications center operator. The operator was paid $100 by LeBeauf for the information.

LeBeauf then gave the information to Scott-Landry so she could file the false returns in the names of the inmates. The returns were filed between May 2005 and February 2006, and Scott-Landry collected refunds in the form of cashier’s checks and stored value cards totaling $813,183, according to court documents. The money was then deposited into bank accounts controlled by LeBeauf and Scott-Landry.

The couple withdrew about $26,000 of that money to purchase a 2004 Chevrolet Suburban, according to authorities. FBI agents found inmate names, stored-value cards and other items used in the fraud scheme inside that vehicle.

LeBeauf tried to remove the vehicle and the evidence in the presence of armed IRS agents, authorities said. Federal officials praised St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne for his cooperation in the investigation. LeBeauf, a former resource officer at Destrehan High School, resigned from the Sheriff’s Office after the couple’s indictment in 2010.

In June, LeBeauf pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States while Scott-Landry pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in addition to the conspiracy charge. The case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation Division