A longtime agent for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was arrested on March 20 and is facing charges after allegedly filing false personal tax returns for three years, the Department of Justice announced.
Ndeye Amy Thioub, 67, was arrested in Swampscott, Massachusetts, and charged with filing false tax returns in 2017, 2018, and 2019, the DOJ said.
She is set to appear in federal court in Boston on March 21.
According to Joshua Levy, acting United States Attorney for Massachusetts, Ms. Thioub worked for the IRS for more than 17 years, most recently as a revenue agent for the Large Business and International Division of the agency.
In that role, Ms. Thioub regularly conducted independent field examinations and related investigations of complex income tax returns filed by large businesses, corporations, and organizations, according to officials.
The role meant Ms. Thioub also had “extensive and specialized knowledge of and training in accounting techniques, practices, and investigative audit techniques,” officials said.
The longtime IRS agent was also responsible for examining and resolving an array of tax issues for individuals and business organizations that may include extensive national and/or international subsidiaries, according to the DOJ.
In addition, Ms. Thioub worked as a visiting instructor at Salem State University in Massachusetts, where she taught college-level classes on verifying records, professional standards; ethics; the professional responsibilities and legal liabilities issues facing auditors, and more, officials said.
IRS Agent ‘Underreported Income’
As a result, the business net loss Ms. Thioub claimed was then carried over to her personal IRS forms, which reduced her adjusted gross income and the amount of money she was liable to pay taxes on, according to the DOJ.The DOJ alleges Ms. Thioub underreported her total income by $43,805 in 2017, $20,324 in 2018, and $27,063 in 2019.
Ms. Thioub faces up to three years in prison, followed by one year of supervised release and a fine of up to $100,000, if found guilty of filing a false tax return.
The Epoch Times has contacted her attorney for comment.
Ms. Thioub’s arrest comes after the IRS said in January that it had launched 1,409 tax crime investigations and identified $5.5 billion in tax fraud in 2023, with approximately 665 individuals being sentenced for tax crimes.
That included a father and daughter who ran an “elaborate tax preparation scheme” from their Iowa home, allegedly victimizing hundreds of immigrants and refugees who worked at meat-packing facilities across the state by claiming fraudulent tax credits and redirecting their customers’ tax refunds to their own accounts, according to the IRS.
In a separate case, a French national living in West Virginia was sentenced to 34 years in federal prison for allegedly orchestrating an international tax scheme that involved wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
The man allegedly filed 1,701 false tax returns and claimed $9.1 million in refunds, resulting in the IRS issuing $2.2 million in refunds, according to the agency.
Further investigation revealed the man was tracking more than 700 U.S.-based accounts containing more than $50 million, the IRS said.
