Broward clerk’s daughter sentenced to over 7 years on federal racketeering, fraud charges

Monika Jenkins, the daughter of Broward County Clerk of Court Brenda D. Forman, was sentenced Wednesday to more than seven years in federal prison for her involvement in a criminal group that used taxpayers’ and accounting firms’ stolen personal information and credentials to file false tax returns, netting millions.

The indictment was filed in the Middle District of Florida in September 2022, and Jenkins was arrested in South Florida in October 2022. She entered a plea agreement this August, pleading guilty to one count of racketeering and one count of aggravated identity theft, court records said.

Jenkins was sentenced at the federal courthouse in Orlando to 87 months, followed by three years of supervised release, court records said, and ordered to pay $3.4 million in restitution.

Jenkins is one of nine defendants in the case and was the third to be sentenced. Co-defendant Michael Jean Poix was sentenced in November to 130 months, or nearly 11 years, in prison and co-defendant Louisaint Jolteus was sentenced in October to110 months in prison, or over nine years, according to court records.

Co-defendants Vladimyr Cherelus, Dickenson Elan, Jeff Jordan Propht-Francisque, Louis Noel Michel, Alain Jean-Louis and Andi Junior Jacques have not been sentenced. Sentencings are scheduled for later this month for Propht-Francisque, Jean-Louis and Michel. Cherelus and Jacques will be sentenced in January, and Elan will be sentenced in February.

The FBI began an investigation after the server of an accounting firm in Orlando was hacked and the personal identifiable information of the firm’s clients was stolen in January 2017, according to Jenkins’s plea agreement.

The investigation found that Jenkins and her co-conspirators were involved in the conspiracy from at least December 2015 through at least March 2019, the court document said. Jenkins accessed a market on the dark web that sold stolen credentials of breached computer servers that were then used to steal taxpayers’ personal information.

Jenkins and the others then used the stolen personal identifiable information to file fraudulent tax returns. She also used the compromised servers to steal tax preparers’ credentials in order to file the fraudulent returns, the plea agreement said.

Forman and Dian Diaz, the clerk’s office chief operating officer, wrote character letters in support of Jenkins. Forman wrote that law enforcement officials called her on the day her daughter was arrested, asking for her help in getting her daughter to come out of her apartment, according to the letter. She wrote she did not know why.

Forman wrote that Jenkins fell into the “wrong crowd” but started to get her life on track before her arrest last October. Jenkins went to real estate school and passed the state exam, and Forman wrote that she introduced her to a real estate broker friend to learn from.

“No parent wants to see their child spend years behind bars,” Forman wrote to the judge. “She is not a horrible person, she made a mistake that has haunted her, she thought this guy or team really cared for her and she didn’t think what this would cost her.”

Diaz wrote in her letter that she met Jenkins through her work relationship and friendship with Forman.

“I have worked in the court system for more than 34 years and have seen people reinvent themselves after their criminal justice experiences,” Diaz wrote to the judge. “They go on to do great things for themselves and others. I pray that Monika will be given the opportunity to prove that she is one of those people. She is worthy of a second chance.”

During the conspiracy, Jenkins’s co-defendants formed new businesses in South Florida, posing as legitimate tax preparation firms, and received legitimate Electronic Filing Identification Numbers, the credentials given to tax preparers to file returns. They used the new businesses to file fraudulent returns using the stolen personal information of taxpayers, the agreement said.

Jenkins and the co-defendants also used stolen taxpayer information to submit false returns that appeared to be submitted by the individuals themselves rather than through a firm. She controlled the bank accounts that the fraudulently-received returns were deposited in, the court document said.

There were numerous emails between Jenkins and the co-defendants with stolen personal information, passwords, usernames and other information, and 900 fraudulent tax returns were submitted electronically from an IP address at Jenkins’s home in Hollywood between 2014 and 2018, the plea agreement said.

Jenkins in one email to a co-conspirator in February 2016 sent photos of laptop screens, showing an “active intrusion” into the server of a certified public accounting firm in Arizona, according to the agreement, and photos of a tax return of one of the firm’s clients. A few days later, Jenkins created an email address using the name of that business’s director, and the group began filing fraudulent tax returns using the director’s and the firm’s credentials.

In December 2016, Jenkins sent a photo of an IRS announcement to a now-deceased co-defendant who is identified only in the court documents by the username “Rich4ever4430” with information on a “new wave of attacks that allow identity thieves to file fraudulent tax returns by remotely taking over practitioners’ computers,” according to the agreement. That co-defendant forwarded the message to Cherelus.

The email exchanges with stolen information continued. The group would oftentimes use personal identifiable information stolen from one firm and file false returns using another victim firm’s credentials, the court document said.

Jean-Louis in one instance paid $1,120 on the dark web for server credentials of an accounting firm in Texas and emailed the information to Jenkins. Within three months in early 2017, the group used that information to file nearly 300 false tax returns, netting $1.4 million in refunds, the court document said.

The group in total filed over 9,200 fraudulent tax returns, and the IRS accepted many of them, the plea agreement said, paying an estimated total of more than $6 million.

Court documents said Jenkins’s mother Forman made a statement at her sentencing. Jenkins’s attorney did not return a voicemail seeking comment Wednesday afternoon.

Jenkins was ordered to surrender herself to start her sentence before 2 p.m. Jan. 8.