Jailhouse Accountants

We've all heard of Jailhouse lawyers, but he Tennessean now claims to have coined the expression  "Jailhouse accountant," for Walter Allen "Beau" Johnson, a Knoxville, Tenn, area inmate who manufactured tax returns generating $58,000 in tax refunds which were deposited into his girl friends bank accounts.  This is reporter James Satterfield's story:

"Move over, jailhouse lawyers. The IRS contends there’s a new pseudo-professional in the prison yard: a jailhouse accountant. A federal indictment unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court in Knoxville alleges Walter Allen 'Beau' Johnson of Sevierville spent his time in the state prison system cooking up false tax returns for fellow inmates and depositing more than $58,000 in return checks into a female accomplice’s personal bank account.

It was not clear Friday which prison Johnson had been assigned to or why. Court records indicate he was arrested locally, so he probably was already free from prison when the IRS caught on to the scam. 

The case is being transferred to U.S. District Court in Nashville, where the indictment against Johnson was filed under seal June 30. The indictment says he had a female helper in Middle Tennessee, where he was imprisoned. It identifies her only by the initials 'J.H.'"
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In reality this scenario is super common; you see it at a lot of local news websites.  It's hard to see the logic behind this crime from the standpoint of say....getting away with it.