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A former IRS worker was billed in Utah federal court for allegedly trying to steal $2.1 million in tax credits owed to Exxon Mobil by diverting the funds employing a taxpayer database he had entry to.
Prosecutors explained Wednesday that previous IRS account administration worker Rodney Quinn Rupe obtained a U.S. Treasury check for $2,100,377 in January just after diverting Exxon’s tax credits to an entity he experienced produced, and then tried to deposit the check at various credit rating union locations around the subsequent two months.
Rupe, a 46-calendar year-aged who lives in Syracuse, Utah, is billed with wire fraud, mail fraud, lender fraud and theft of governing administration house in U.S. District Courtroom in Salt Lake Metropolis.
He is owing to make his first visual appearance in the case on July 3 in that court docket. The scenario was highlighted Thursday by the authorized news web site Courtroom View.
Rupe was performing at the IRS’ service center in Ogden, Utah, in 2021 when he started the diversion scheme, in accordance to an indictment filed Wednesday.
As part of his work, Rupe “had the capacity to adjust tax, credits, penalties, and curiosity to particular taxpayer accounts in an IRS laptop database,” the indictment claimed.
Rupe accessed Exxon’s taxpayer account through the IRS database setting up in April 2021, and three months afterwards accessed the database “to assign a newly created Employer Identification Selection (“EIN”) to an entity that Rupe created and managed, Ex Xo Exteriors Ltd.,” the indictment said.
In April 2022, the indictment suggests, Rupe accessed a database to transfer $2.02 million in tax credits from oil and gasoline giant Exxon’s taxpayer account to Ex Xo Exteriors Ltd.’s taxpayer account, the indictment alleges.
Extra than a yr later, in August 2023, Rupe “accessed an IRS databases to transfer the diverted tax credit score money from a single tax 12 months to another,” the indictment suggests.
A thirty day period soon after that, he allegedly applied these tax credits to Ex Xo Exterior’s 2019 tax account, which resulted in the IRS issuing a refund to Ex Xo Exterior for $2.1 million in the variety of a Treasury check out, according to the indictment.
He then tried out to deposit the check at various America Initially Credit Union areas.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office environment in Salt Lake City, which is prosecuting the situation and Rupe’s defense attorney did not quickly react to requests for remark.
A spokeswoman for Exxon Cell declined to comment on the indictment.
An IRS spokesman and a spokesman for The united states Initially Credit score Union experienced no immediate comment.
The business office of the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which investigated Rupe, in an e-mail to CNBC claimed, “TIGTA does not remark on investigative issues which are ongoing or are pending prosecution by the Office of Justice.”