By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
A former IRS revenue officer pleaded guilty Wednesday in Greenbelt, Md., to taking payoffs from a tax preparer to access inside information about clients, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced.
Mark E. Hunt, 45, of Baltimore admitted unlawfully accessing 12 taxpayer accounts at the IRS, authorities said.
According to Hunt’s guilty plea, from March 1999 to May 2004, he wore his IRS identification and was introduced as the “man on the inside” at meetings between the owner of a tax preparation service and potential clients or investors, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press release.
He ultimately accessed 12 of the clients’ IRS accounts “to obtain confidential information that the owner needed to further his businesses,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. “In so doing, Hunt entered the IRS databases 24 times in order to illegally navigate the stored data and retrieve confidential taxpayer information.”
He first denied knowing the tax preparer in 2008, but later admitted that he was paid 10 to 12 occasions to provide the taxpayer information.
Hunt faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Sentencing is set for Jan. 24 before U.S. District Judge Roger W. Titus.
