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A former IRS employee has been indicted in federal court in Utah for allegedly trying to steal $2.1 million in tax credits owed Exxon Mobil by redirecting the funds using a taxpayer database to which he had access.
Prosecutors said Wednesday that Rodney Quinn Rupe, a former IRS account manager, received a $2,100,377 check from the U.S. Treasury in January after diverting Exxon’s tax credits to a company he founded , and then attempted to deposit the check at multiple credit union locations over the next two months.
Rupe, a 46-year-old who lives in Syracuse, Utah, is charged in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City with wire fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud and theft of government property.
He is scheduled to appear in this court for the first time in the case on July 3. The case was highlighted Thursday by legal news website Court Watch.
According to an indictment filed Wednesday, Rupe was working at the IRS service center in Ogden, Utah, in 2021 when he began the diversion program.
As part of his work, Rupe “had the ability to adjust taxes, credits, penalties and interest to specific tax accounts in an IRS computer database,” the indictment says.
Rupe accessed Exxon’s taxpayer account through the IRS database starting in April 2021 and accessed the database three months later “to provide a newly created employer identification number to an entity created and controlled by Rupe, Ex Xo Exteriors Ltd. (” ON”). ” says the indictment.
In April 2022, the indictment says, Rupe accessed a database to transfer $2.02 million in tax credits from oil and gas giant Exxon’s tax account to Ex Xo Exteriors Ltd.’s tax account. to transfer, it says in the indictment.
More than a year later, in August 2023, Rupe “accessed an IRS database to transfer the redirected tax credits from one tax year to another,” the indictment says.
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A month later, he allegedly applied these tax credits to Ex Xo Exterior’s 2019 tax account, causing the IRS to file Ex
He then attempted to deposit the check at multiple America First Credit Union locations.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Salt Lake City, which is prosecuting the case, and Rupe’s defense attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
An Exxon Mobile spokeswoman declined to comment on the charges.
An IRS spokesman and a spokesman for America First Credit Union had no immediate comment.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General for Tax Administration, which investigated Rupe, said in an email to CNBC: “TIGTA does not comment on ongoing investigations or prosecutions by the Department of Justice.”
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2024-06-07 21:19:52
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