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October 13, 2019 03:34 pm

IRS Programmer Stole Identities, Funded A Two-Year Shopping Spree

A computer programmer at America's tax-collecting agency "stole multiple people's identities, and used them to open illicit credit cards to fund vacations and shop for shoes and other goods," write Quartz, citing a complaint unsealed last week in federal court. An anonymous reader quotes their report:The complaint accuses the 35-year-old federal worker of racking up almost $70,000 in charges over the course of two years, illegally using "the true names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers" of at least three people. The US Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration, which oversees internal wrongdoing at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), is investigating the crime, although the complaint doesn't specify how the employee obtained the information. The arrest, however, comes just months after the Government Accountability Office -- the federal government's auditor, essentially -- issued a report raising concerns about the security of taxpayer information held at the IRS. The report said that unaddressed shortcomings left taxpayer data "unnecessarily vulnerable to inappropriate and undetected use, modification, or disclosure," which could allow employees or outsiders to illegally access millions of people's personal information. An IRS call center employee in Atlanta pleaded guilty last year to illegally using taxpayer data to file fraudulent tax returns, ultimately collecting almost $6,000. In 2016, another IRS worker in Atlanta admitted to improperly accessing the personal information of two taxpayers, amassing close to half a million dollars from illicit tax refunds.... The IRS employee's alleged scheme took place between January 2016 and February 2018, according to court filings. Investigators say he used a fraudulently obtained American Express card to fly to Sacramento and Miami Beach. He also used the card for some 37 Uber rides, nine payments on his father's Amazon account totaling $1,200, various purchases at Lowe's, the Designer Shoe Warehouse, BJ's Wholesale Club, and a flooring outlet, as well as a $7,400 payment to a business he owned. The complaint says the employee, who works for the tax agency as a software developer, obtained a second fraudulent credit card, which he used to fly to Montego Bay, Jamaica. A third fraudulent card was used to travel to Iceland. In a particularly brazen move, investigators say the suspect linked this card to a phony PayPal account he opened using his official IRS email address. Two of the credit cards were delivered to his home address, while a third was sent to his parents' address, according to the article. "The phone numbers listed on the accounts also belonged to the suspect, and he accessed emails associated with the accounts from his home IP address."

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