Details of the Largest Theft of IRS Files in U.S. History

The IRS thief will be sentenced Monday Jan. 29 at 10:00 a.m. Despite committing thousands of felonies and despite obstructing justice, the thief is still only being charged with a single count.

A DOJ sentencing memorandum provides details of the largest-ever theft of personal IRS files. The thief gave the stolen material to the New York Times and the progressive group, Pro Publica, which coincidentally (cough) began publishing private taxpayer information at the very same time Democrats launched a major tax increase campaign.

The thief — named Charles Littlejohn — was an IRS contractor via Booz Allen. He somehow had access to “vast amounts of unmasked taxpayer data” on IRS systems.

Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IRS brass spent two years trying to downplay the likelihood the stolen material originated from IRS systems. You can see a video compilation of these statements here and a written compilation here.

Unbelievably, the IRS recently inked a contract with Booz Allen worth up to $2.6 billion — for database and IT services. Other than Real Clear Investigations, beltway media has not bothered to mention it.

Littlejohn sought a job with Booz Allen “with the hope and expectation of accessing and disclosing tax returns and return information.”

Key excerpts from the DOJ sentencing memorandum can be found below.

The IRS thief developed an elaborate scheme to steal sensitive, private taxpayer files:

“By late 2018, Defendant had developed a sophisticated, detailed plan to secretly download Public Official A’s tax returns and return information from a particular internal IRS database which he learned it was stored. Rather than directly search the database –which might have triggered scrutiny or detection of his scheme– Defendant queried the database using more generalized parameters.” 

The IRS thief’s credentials display his understanding of possible outcomes. 

“Based on his training, his personal experience, and his work, he understood the gravity of his offense. He understood the impact that it would have on his victims. But he acted anyway.” 
The memo concludes by emphasizing that “18 U.S.C § 3553 (a)(2)(B) obligates the Court to consider the need for the sentence imposed to ‘afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct’ and provides a statutory vehicle for the Court to communicate an appropriate message about the seriousness of disclosing taxpayer information.”

Gaps in IRS security protocols allowed the thievery to occur. 

“Defendant learned that IRS protocols could detect and prevent large downloads or uploads from the IRS systems and devices. But on or about November 30, 2018, he exploited a loophole in those controls by uploading the stolen tax return and return information to a private website that he controlled. He thereafter used a personal computer to download the data from that private website.”

IRS thief Littlejohn connected with a progressive group and the New York Times to provide the stolen information to reporters. 

“Defendant then stole additional tax returns and return information associated with Public Official A (along with related individuals and entities) and provided those to News Organization 1 as well. On or about September 27th, 2020, News Organization 1 published the first of several articles that publicly disclosed information contained in Public Official A’s tax returns.” (…) “Beginning in or about June 2021, News Organization 2 published the first in a series of nearly 50 articles using the return and return information Defendant had disclosed.”  

IRS thief Littlejohn used his position to impede the possibility of an investigation into his conduct. 

“Throughout Defendant’s scheme, he undertook efforts to obstruct and impede the investigation that he anticipated would follow the publication of the tax data he had stolen. For example, in 2021––before returning his assigned IRS laptop when he ceased working on Company A’s IRS contract––Defendant deleted nearly all the files in his user profiles. Additionally, as described above, he destroyed the virtual machine he had used to facilitate his theft of taxpayer returns and return information from the database. Finally, after uploading returns and return information to the private website, Defendant promptly contacted the domain registration service to cancel the private website’s domain registration.”

The Department of Justice urges the Court to grant an upward departure in pursuance with an Application Note. 

“Application Note provides two non-exhaustive examples of circumstances where such a departure would be appropriate: an upward departure may be warranted when the ‘offense level determined under this guideline substantially understates the seriousness of the offense’ where the offense ‘involved personal information, means of identification,… or tax return information of a substantial number of individuals’ and where the ‘offense caused or risked substantial non-monetary harm (e.g physical harm, psychological harm, or severe emotional trauma, or resulted in a substantial invasion of privacy interest) to individuals whose private or protected information was obtained.” 

The nature and circumstances of the offense warrant maximum sentencing. 

“The human impact of Defendant’s crimes is enormous. Worse, it appears that the harm may continue indefinitely: News Organization 2 has continued to publish stories using the data disclosed by Defendant even after the Plea Agreement in this case. The harm arising from Defendant’s crime is accordingly so extensive and ongoing that it is impossible to quantify.” 

—

“The Defendant’s disclosures were not the result of a single impulse or a momentary lapse in judgment. He executed his disclosure scheme over the course of multiple years, plotting and calculating carefully at each step to minimize the risk of detection and maximize the impact of his disclosures.” 

The mission of the IRS cannot be achieved within the circumstances of the Defendant’s actions. 

“The Defendant’s offense constitutes an egregious breach of the trust placed in him by our government. The IRS provided the Defendant with access to sensitive, unmasked data associated with millions of Americans. Instead of respecting the trust that the agency (and, by extension, hundreds of millions of individuals who shared their information with it) placed in him, Defendant exploited it to advance his own private, political agenda.”