A victim of the heist wrote a commentary for the Wall Street Journal today, claiming that the IRS hacker took the tax files of between 50,000 and 70,000 individuals, making it the greatest theft of private taxpayer information in American history. (Photo : by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
A victim of the heist wrote a commentary for the Wall Street Journal today, claiming that the IRS hacker took the tax files of between 50,000 and 70,000 individuals, making it the greatest theft of private taxpayer information in American history.
It turns out that IRS thief Charles Littlejohn committed at least 50,000 felonies and was only charged with one count, a decision for which the government has not provided a sufficient explanation. The government understated the number of victims when sentencing Littlejohn, using the term "thousands" instead of "tens of thousands."
Michael Jordan, Lebron James, Oprah Winfrey, Taylor Swift, Tiger Woods, Lorne Michaels, Calvin Klein, Floyd Mayweather, Justin Verlander, and tens of thousands of other Americans are among the victims; the most of them are not well-known. A notification from the United States is set to reach many of them. Treasury that there has been a breach of their privacy.
Many years' worth of tax returns, tax audits, information on stock transactions, gambling losses, and medical expenditure deductions are all included in the "vast trove" of pilfered papers.
Despite the hysteria in the media, the statute of limitations had already passed when it came to the theft of Donald Trump's tax returns, therefore the thief was not legally charged.
With only five years in prison for perpetrating fifty thousand offenses, the burglar got off lightly. For each crime, that works out to less than an hour. The left is already attempting to portray the thief as a hero, and he is appealing the punishment.
The report that there are at least 50,000 victims now originates from a column written by writer Ira Stoll, who was contacted by the U.S. Treasury Department that his data was pilfered and sent to Pro Publica, a progressive group.
The burglar acknowledged that his main goal in applying for a job that would provide him access to private IRS networks was to steal confidential documents.
Coincidentally, the progressive Pro Publica released the first of its reports at the same time as President Biden and legislative Democrats initiated a significant tax hike initiative.
After sleuthing through the private tax files, the progressive crew at ProPublica discovered that wealthy Americans actually pay a fairly high tax rate. Thus, in a desperate attempt, the group calculated what it believed to be a "True Tax Rate" using unrealized gains-specifically, "gains" that are not yet actual.
Coincidentally, Democrats in Congress and President Biden are attempting to tax unrealized profits.
To provide a moral justification for their decision to collaborate with the thief and engage in severe privacy violations, the progressive publication Pro Publica made care to highlight the victims' "lavish" lifestyles. Their stance appears to be: If you get wealthy enough, we will infringe upon your right to privacy.
Although Pro Publica bills itself as a government watchdog, it is extremely inquisitive about both the theft itself and the public trust breach resulting from the IRS's negligence in protecting private records.
The burglar was an IRS contractor hired by the big company Booz Allen. He was able to access IRS computers and "vast amounts of unmasked taxpayer data" in some way.
For two years, IRS officials and Janet Yellen, Biden's Treasury Secretary, attempted to minimize the possibility that the pilfered content came from IRS networks.
Surprisingly, the IRS just signed a $2.6 billion deal with Booz Allen for IT and database services. The media in the Beltway is also strangely indifferent to that.
The people at Pro Publica, who practice "journalism with moral force," are undoubtedly investigating it.
In the meantime, an increasing number of Americans are discovering that they are the victims of identity theft and that they have no clue when their personal data will be released without their consent.
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