Warren woman gets 51 months in prison for a false $374,000 state tax refund she used to buy a house

DETROIT — A Warren woman who claimed a state income tax refund of more than $374,000 she was not owed, then used part of it to buy a house, has been sentenced to 51 months in prison, the Michigan attorney general’s office said Monday.

Robin Young, 52, was sentenced in Wayne County’s 3rd Circuit Court. She pleaded guilty in August to residential mortgage fraud over $100,000, using a computer to commit a crime and filing a false tax return. The first two charges each carry up to 20 years in prison; the tax charge carries up to five.

According to the attorney general’s office, Young filed a 2023 Michigan income tax return electronically in 2024 that falsely claimed the refund. Prosecutors said she knew the state Treasury Department did not owe her the money.

She used more than $100,000 of the refund to buy a home, the office said. When lenders asked where the money came from, she told them Treasury owed it to her.

Young was also ordered to give up a BMW she bought with the refund. The car will be sold and the proceeds put toward restitution. The office did not say how much of the money has been recovered.

“Tax and mortgage fraud siphons time and resources away from public services and harms hardworking Michigan residents who play by the rules,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said when Young entered her plea.

Treasury referred the case to the attorney general, whose office filed charges in May.

Sources:
Michigan Department of Attorney General, “Warren Woman Sentenced for Mortgage Fraud, Filing a False $374,000 Tax Refund Return,” Oct. 5, 2026, https://www.michigan.gov/ag/news/press-releases/2026/10/05/warren-woman-sentenced-for-mortgage-fraud-filing-a-false-374k-tax-refund-return
Michigan Department of Attorney General, “Warren Woman Pleads Guilty to Mortgage Fraud, Filing a False $374,000 Tax Refund Return,” Aug. 24, 2026, https://www.michigan.gov/ag/news/press-releases/2026/08/24/warren-woman-pleads-to-mortgage-fraud-filing-a-false-tax-refund-return
Photo: Michael Barera, “Detroit December 2021 59 (Frank Murphy Hall of Justice),” Dec. 29, 2021, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), cropped and color-corrected; derivative under the same ShareAlike license, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Detroit_December_2021_59_(Frank_Murphy_Hall_of_Justice).jpg

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