It seems as if former IRS employee Missy Sledge tried to pull the wool over the eyes of her former employer. Sledge, who was responsible for conducting due diligence on “suspicious” looking tax returns, was arrested at her desk in Atlanta, Georgia on November 26, 2013 and charged with one count of mail fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft, to which she later plead guilty on February 18, 2014 according to Bloomberg Daily.
Missy conspired alongside several other individuals, who remain anonymous, to cheat the IRS out of nearly 2.4 million dollars in tax refunds in exchange for a portion of the potential payoff. Missy, a longtime employee of the IRS, knowingly processed the “fraudulent and stolen” tax refunds producing the $2,378.678.35 figure reported by The Business Journals. While some of the fraudulent tax returns were filed by her co-conspirators using stolen identities (including stolen names and social security numbers), others were legitimate returns with large refund amounts which Missy helped to reroute to her co-conspirators. In the opinion of Federal prosecutor Sally Yates, Missy whose job was “to protect the government” from tax fraud, used her position as an employee “to victimize 60 taxpayers,” reported Identity Theft 911. Fortunately, the IRS was able to stop the tax fraud scheme in its tracks before the refunds were issued.
As a part of her plea deal, Missy is required to pay $500,000, which according to Bloomberg Daily, “represents the actual losses of the government.” She is also to serve four years and nine months in prison and an additional five years on probation.