This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
An Internal Revenue Service employee who worked in Salt Lake City has been indicted on charges that she stole personal identity information from the IRS to create fraudulent tax returns and collect more than $1 million in refunds.
The employee, a 39-year-old woman, was working in Birmingham, Ala., from 2008 to 2011 when the alleged thefts occurred, and she later worked in Salt Lake City, according to a statement by federal prosecutors in Alabama. The employee "was supposed to be assisting taxpayers experiencing problems resulting from identity theft" when she acquired the personal information, prosecutors wrote.
Two other people were arrested in connection with the alleged scheme, prosecutors wrote: a Birmingham woman and a Wisconsin man.
Since November 2011, the IRS employee at the center of the allegations has worked in similar roles in Omaha, Neb., New Orleans and Salt Lake City. She was arrested Tuesday in Holly Springs, Miss.
"Taxpayers trust, and expect, that IRS employees, as a whole, will safeguard their most sensitive personal information. Taxpayers also must trust that IRS employees in the Taxpayer Advocate Service will not only protect their sensitive information, but will actively assist them when it has been compromised by others," said Joyce White Vance, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. "An IRS taxpayer advocate who exploits that trust, and with full knowledge of the significant impacts of identity theft, uses her IRS access to compromise taxpayers' identities and steal a million dollars from the U.S. Treasury is committing a particularly egregious crime that will not go unpunished."