Federal authorities on Tuesday sentenced Myles Benjamin Depew, 35, to three years and three months in prison after he admitted to a scheme that used stolen identities to chase pandemic aid, bank access and Missouri tax refunds. U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. also ordered Depew to pay $25,000 in restitution to the United States government and $10,728 to the State of Missouri.
Depew’s sentence closes a case built around a string of fraudulent filings that began in 2020 and stretched into 2023. In June 2020, he used another person’s identity to fraudulently apply for and receive an $11,000 Economic Injury Disaster Loan. A month later, he used a second stolen identity to secure another fraudulent loan for $14,000. He later used a third person’s identity to open a checking account at a West Virginia bank, and that account became part of the machinery for Missouri state tax fraud.
What made the case more than a simple loan scam was the way it kept moving from one fraud to the next. Authorities said Depew prepared two false Missouri state income tax returns, then routed refunds into the West Virginia account. A $2,060 refund landed there in February 2022, followed by another $8,668 deposit in April 2023. By then, the paper trail had tied federal pandemic money, bank account access and state tax filings into one scheme.
Depew pleaded guilty in February in U.S. District Court in Cape Girardeau to three counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. The plea ended the case before trial, but it also left little dispute about how the fraud worked: investigators said he used his job as a tax preparer to get names, birthdates and Social Security numbers that helped him impersonate others. That access turned a routine professional role into a tool for theft.
He also told agents from the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration that he spent about $40,000 on casino gambling, $5,000 on food and $5,000 on methamphetamine. Those admissions did not change the mechanics of the case, but they helped explain where some of the money went after it was stolen. The pattern was not limited to one pool of victims or one government program. It moved across federal relief, banking and tax systems until investigators caught up with it.
The sentence now gives the case its final answer: Depew is going to prison, owes restitution to both the federal government and Missouri, and has already admitted guilt in a fraud that depended on stolen identities and repeated deception. For readers who have watched similar financial crimes spread through pandemic programs and tax systems, the outcome is plain enough. The theft did not remain hidden in paperwork forever, and the court treated it as a serious federal crime.
