8 Indicted in Electronic Filing of False Tax Returns : Crime: Five Valley residents are charged in an alleged scam.

A federal grand jury Friday indicted eight people, five of them from the San Fernando Valley, on charges of conspiring to file electronic income tax returns falsely claiming $500,000 in refunds from the U.S. government and collecting the money at the office of a Van Nuys tax preparer.

They allegedly schemed to create false W-2 forms and give them to people recruited to present them to tax preparers, according to a statement by U.S. Atty. Lourdes G. Baird and Assistant Atty. Gen. Shirley Peterson. About 200 fraudulent tax returns were filed, they said.

The tax returns, which were collected at the H&R; Block office in Van Nuys, were then cashed and split up among the participants, the indictment states.

The 77-count indictment named Jerome Hearne, 35, of Paramount; Daphne Thomas of Los Angeles; Doris Martin, 41, of Van Nuys; Claudell Green, 28, of Van Nuys; Sheila Green, 30, of Van Nuys; Cheryl Jones, 39, of Los Angeles; Chissay White, 26, of Sylmar; and Elton Chambers, 45, of Sunland.

The indictment alleges that Thomas, a tax preparer for H&R; Block, arranged with other defendants to submit fraudulent tax returns to her and to other tax preparers who were not aware the information was false. Thomas would see that the tax returns were filed electronically, which allows taxpayers to receive refunds within a few days of filing. She then took the tax refund checks when they arrived at H&R; Block, authorities said.