{"id":159877,"date":"2012-03-22T19:22:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T19:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bf34a67c-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e"},"modified":"2012-03-22T19:22:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T19:22:00","slug":"bf34a68f-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/bf34a68f-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Checks scam no impact on current tax refund checks\u2019 release\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Finance said yesterday that the scheme recently uncovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation involving the cashing of fraudulent CNMI tax refund checks does not impact the current tax refunds and rebates that will soon be released. <\/p>\n<p>FBI arrested on Monday one suspect in the refund checks scam, Mohammad Jahangir Miah, who is on home confinement for his conviction in a driver\u2019s license scam at the Department of Public Safety\u2019s Bureau of Motor Vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>Finance Secretary Larrisa Larson said the checks in this case are from \u201cseveral years ago\u201d and \u201cdo not have anything to do with current tax refunds\/rebates that will be released in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs the investigation is ongoing and initial arrests have been made, I cannot comment on the case at this time because I do not want to jeopardize the work that has been done by DPS and the FBI,\u201d Larson said in an email interview yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>Larson also said the Department of Finance was the one that requested assistance from DPS and FBI \u201cand have been assisting in the investigation and provided all necessary documents required to assist in this investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUpon receiving word that the investigation is completed and all guilty parties have been brought to justice, I will be able to comment further,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p>Lt. Gov. Eloy S. Inos, in a separate interview, said the government will continue to release rebate and refund checks due to taxpayers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a liability of the government. Guam had over $200 million and they ended up borrowing money to pay it so \u2026That is still an option. It\u2019s a matter of whether or not we have the credit ability to do the borrowing,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Finance said yesterday that the scheme recently uncovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation involving the cashing of fraudulent CNMI tax refund checks does not impact the current tax refunds and rebates that will soon be released. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}