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Kristopher Thomas

Defendant

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The profile

A California state prisoner serving 50 years to life for a 2010 murder, charged in 2024 with running, from his cell at Kern Valley State Prison, a conspiracy that filed payroll tax returns seeking more than $550 million in Employee Retention Credit refunds. Several million dollars was paid out, prosecutors say. The charges are allegations.

Identity and role

Kristopher Thomas, 36 when he was charged, has been incarcerated since December 2010 after a conviction for a gang-related first-degree murder in the Los Angeles area, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California. He is serving a sentence of 50 years to life at Kern Valley State Prison in Delano, California, and is the lead defendant in United States v. Thomas et al., No. 1:24-cr-00231 (E.D. Cal.). His co-defendants are Charmane Dozier, 44, and Kettisha Thompson-Dozier, 55, of Waldorf, Maryland (Thompson-Dozier is Thomas's mother and is married to Dozier), and Sharon Vance, 36, of Hawthorne, California, whom the office describes as one of his girlfriends.

The case and pandemic-relief role

The tax case came out of a drug investigation. In August 2022 the Drug Enforcement Administration started a wiretap on a methamphetamine operation that, prosecutors say, Thomas ran from the prison on contraband cellphones and prison-issued tablets. The intercepted calls "showed that he was also running a multimillion-dollar tax fraud scheme," the office said, and the DEA brought in IRS Criminal Investigation and the FBI.

The Employee Retention Credit was sized by headcount and wages and paid out on quarterly payroll returns. According to the September 2024 release, from January 2022 through July 2023 the defendants filed "hundreds of fraudulent payroll tax returns claiming over $550 million in tax refunds" for more than 100 fabricated, existing and defunct businesses, overstating employees and wages. They got business information from family, friends and acquaintances, at times through identity theft, and solicited real businesses to let them file "in exchange for exorbitant commissions." Several million dollars was actually paid out, the office said, and spent on jewelry and trips to Disney World and Las Vegas. For the Las Vegas trip, prosecutors say, Thomas paid to have guests driven from Los Angeles, a night in a penthouse, and a private jet home.

The $550 million is the amount claimed. The release gives no exact figure for the amount paid.

  • Charged: by federal criminal complaint, with arrests in February 2024 in what the office called Operation Fraud Street Mafia (nine arrested in California and Maryland across the drug and tax cases).
  • Indicted: September 19, 2024, on one count of conspiracy to commit tax fraud (maximum 10 years). Thomas is separately indicted in a federal methamphetamine trafficking case that carries a maximum of life in prison.
  • Thomas has not been convicted in either federal case; the charges are allegations. We found no later Justice Department release on the tax case through September 15, 2026 (see the ERC case table).

Where they are now (2025–2026)

The September 2024 release places Thomas at Kern Valley State Prison, serving the state sentence. The indictment is the last court record of the tax case we found.

Sources

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