A Tolland man already facing serious state charges has been indicted by a federal grand jury on multiple counts of tax and wire fraud, authorities announced Wednesday.
George Davis Telford Jr., 36, is accused of orchestrating schemes to defraud both the Internal Revenue Service and Connecticut Department of Labor.
According to the indictment, Telford created fake trust entities to obtain fraudulent tax refunds from the IRS. In 2019 and 2020, he filed five false federal tax returns, seeking about $6.2 million in refunds for purported overpayments to the trusts, the indictment states.
The IRS paid one of the claims, issuing a refund of $564,758 for a return filed in the name of the “Telford Asset Family Trust” for the 2018 tax year, authorities say.
Federal prosecutors also allege that Telford engaged in a separate scheme in 2022 and 2023 to defraud the Connecticut Department of Labor. He is accused of submitting fraudulent unemployment insurance claims on behalf of himself and two others, falsely stating that they had been laid off from a company called “High Class Grads LLC,” which he claimed to own.
Authorities say the company did not actually employ the individuals or pay them wages, resulting in $48,792 in fraudulent benefits being paid by the state.
Telford faces five counts of making and subscribing a false tax return, each carrying a maximum sentence of three years in prison, and three counts of wire fraud, each carrying up to 20 years.
Telford is currently in state custody on bonds totaling $1.2 million in connection with multiple sexual assault and other charges. He is scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 8 in the state cases.
The federal investigation was conducted by the IRS Criminal Investigation Division and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General.
