Thursday, February 28th, 2019 @ 3:31AM

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) reported that on August 3, 2016, in a federal district court in the Northern District of Georgia, an IRS employee was sentenced, after she pled guilty to aggravated identity theft in connection with a fraudulent scheme on May 10, 2016. She had been indicted for mail fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft in January 2016, and was subsequently arrested for the offenses in Atlanta, Georgia. According to the court documents she was an IRS revenue agent in Atlanta. Her official duties as a revenue agent included regularly auditing individual, business, and corporate tax returns, and calculating taxpayers’ correct tax liability based on her examinations. https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/oi_highlights_2016.shtml

In approximately August 2013, this employee was assigned to audit an individual tax return jointly filed by two married taxpayers. The taxpayers had authorized a certified public accountant (CPA) to transact business with the IRS on their behalf. Due to erroneous information received from a third party, the taxpayers had initially underreported and underpaid their Federal tax and, upon correction of the error, owed $758,846 in additional personal income tax, plus interest. The taxpayers, through their CPA, agreed with this assessment. https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/oi_highlights_2016.shtml

The IRS employee subsequently devised a scheme to knowingly defraud the taxpayers and to obtain money by means of false and fraudulent representations. Her scheme was designed to take all or part of the additional Federal tax and interest owed to the IRS by these taxpayers and keep it for herself. She created a fictitious IRS Form 4549, Income Tax Examination Changes, for the taxpayers and placed the fictitious form in the IRS’s files. The fictitious Form 4549 showed a balance due of only $282,363, rather than the $758,846 already agreed upon. She also forged the signature of the taxpayers’ CPA on the fictitious form. https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/oi_highlights_2016.shtml

She then opened a checking account. She later sent a deceptive e-mail to the taxpayer-husband instructing him to send a wire transfer to the newly opened checking account. She failed to disclose that the bank account belonged to her personally rather than to the IRS. https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/oi_highlights_2016.shtml

She also attempted to open a bank account through the Internet at a different financial institution, this time in the names of the married taxpayers. As a follow-up, she sent a signature card via facsimile to the bank and called the bank impersonating the taxpayer-wife in order to inquire about the status of the new account. In furtherance of her scheme, this IRS employee changed, or caused to be changed, the taxpayers’ addresses in the IRS computer system, from their actual residence to a United Parcel Service mailbox opened and controlled by her. https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/oi_highlights_2016.shtml

This IRS employee was sentenced to a mandatory minimum term of two years of imprisonment for the identity theft. https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/oi_highlights_2016.shtml

When IRS employees steal Government funds and commit identity tax refund fraud the IRS fails in its mission to apply the tax law with integrity and fairness to all.

Posted by cfegov
Categories: 2016 CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS OF IRS EMPLOYEES, Criminal Convictions of IRS Employees for 2018, IRS Employees Engage In Tax Refund Identity Fraud, Theft of Government Property By IRS Employees