Guilty plea resolves fraud investigation related to Hurricane Ida recovery
Updated August 12, 2025
BATON ROUGE – A guilty plea in a Baton Rouge criminal court closes the investigation into a fraud case related to the recovery process following Hurricane Ida in 2021.
On July 15, Starr Carbo, former co-owner of a company known as Global Tax Service, pleaded guilty in the 19th Judicial District Criminal Court to a charge of injuring public records. The plea was related to her 2022 arrest, along with two others, for preparing and submitting fraudulent sales tax refund claims for property destroyed during the hurricane.
Carbo, Johnnie Mae Ricard and Erica Williams, all of Westwego, charged clients of Global Tax Service as much as $110 to prepare and submit the sales tax refund form using false information that inflated the value of the losses. The company’s clients told the Louisiana Department of Revenue’s Criminal Investigations Division that they had not provided the information that Carbo, Ricard and Williams submitted on their behalf. All three were arrested in 2022 and prosecuted by the state attorney general’s office as part of a joint anti-tax fraud initiative between LDR and the Louisiana Department of Justice.
As a result of her guilty plea last month, Carbo was sentenced to three years of probation. The court ordered her also to complete a theft deterrence class, reimburse LDR $4,000 for the cost of the investigation, and refrain from preparing state tax returns for the duration of her probation.
Previously, Johnnie Mae Ricard pleaded guilty in July 2023 to the charge of injuring public records and was placed on two years of probation and prohibited from preparing state tax returns for three years.
Erica Williams pleaded guilty in June 2025 to a charge of filing false public records. She was sentenced to three years of probation, ordered to pay $4,000 to LDR for the cost of the investigation and barred from preparing state tax returns for the duration of her probation.
***
For media inquiries, contact:
Byron Henderson
Public Information Director
[email protected]
This contact information is for reporters or official representatives of media outlets. Please visit our contact page for information on personal and business related inquiries.