{"id":1473586,"date":"2024-06-26T17:40:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-26T21:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1473586"},"modified":"2024-06-26T17:40:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-26T21:40:00","slug":"irs-apologizes-to-hedge-fund-magnate-over-leaked-tax-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/irs-apologizes-to-hedge-fund-magnate-over-leaked-tax-returns\/1473586\/","title":{"rendered":"IRS Apologizes To Hedge Fund Magnate Over Leaked Tax Returns"},"content":{"rendered":"

IRS Apologizes To Hedge Fund Magnate Over Leaked Tax Returns<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued an apology as a part of a settlement agreement <\/strong>with hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin, who had sued after a government contractor leaked his confidential tax information.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The Citadel LLC owner filed the complaint<\/a> against the IRS after a government contractor disclosed his confidential tax information to the nonprofit investigative journalism platform ProPublica in 2019. According to the complaint, the contractor the IRS identified as Charles Littlejohn \u201cexploited the IRS\u2019s willful failure\u201d to set up \u201cadequate, administrative, technical, and physical safeguards\u201d to protect its data.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The IRS apologized to Mr. Griffin and \u201cthe thousands of other Americans whose personal information was leaked to the press,\u201d in a June 25 statement<\/a>. Both Mr. Griffin and the IRS filed a motion<\/a> to dismiss the case on June 24.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe IRS takes its responsibilities seriously and acknowledges that it failed to prevent Mr. Littlejohn\u2019s criminal conduct and unlawful disclosure of Mr. Griffin\u2019s confidential data,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> the IRS said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccordingly, the IRS assures Mr. Griffin and the other victims of Mr. Littlejohn\u2019s actions that it has made substantial investments in its data security to strengthen its safeguarding of taxpayer information.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In January, the Department of Justice announced<\/a> that Mr. Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison for disclosing private tax returns, a charge to which he pleaded guilty in October 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe violated his responsibility to safeguard the sensitive information that was entrusted to his care, and now he is a convicted felon,\u201d <\/strong><\/em>said Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri of the Justice Department\u2019s Criminal Division.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit said ProPublica later published confidential tax information, acknowledging that the information was from \u201cpeople who, in good faith, sent their tax and personal and private information to the Internal Revenue Service with no expectation that it would ever be made public,\u201d the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n

\u201cProPublica boasted that the information it obtained was \u2018not just tax returns,\u2019 but also included \u2018information that is sent to the IRS about financial activities\u2019 such as \u2018income and taxes,\u2019 \u2018investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits,\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/em> the complaint said. \u201cSignificantly, ProPublica identified the IRS as the source of the confidential information it published, including Mr. Griffin\u2019s return information.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Systematic Failures\u2019<\/h2>\n

According to the complaint, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA)\u2014the IRS\u2019s independent oversight department\u2014frequently warned the IRS of \u201csystematic failures\u201d in its data-protection systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite these warnings, however, the IRS continues to willfully and intentionally fail to establish adequate safeguards to protect Mr. Griffin and other taxpayers\u2019 confidential tax return information,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n

In its apology, the IRS acknowledged the weaknesses in the system and said it will work with TIGTA and other agencies \u201cto assess the IRS\u2019s systems for potential vulnerabilities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe agency believes that its actions and the resolution of this case will result in a stronger and more trustworthy process for safeguarding the personal information of all taxpayers,\u201d the IRS said.<\/p>\n

Though they aren\u2019t named in the court documents, the tax returns of billionaires such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Michael Bloomberg were named in a ProPublica disclosure in 2021, a year after The New York Times published former President Donald Trump\u2019s tax returns.<\/p>\n

Mr. Littlejohn\u2019s Clearance<\/h2>\n

The DOJ said in a 2023 court document<\/a> that\u00a0Mr. Littlejohn had top IRS clearance from 2018 to 2021.<\/p>\n

He used this clearance to upload data on his website and contacted several news organizations about providing tax returns for them to publish.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn or about July and August 2020, Defendant accessed unmasked IRS data associated with thousands of the nation\u2019s wealthiest people, including returns and return information dating back over 15 years,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> the DOJ said.<\/p>\n

One unidentified news organization published up to 50 articles using the information Mr. Littlejohn provided, the DOJ said.<\/p>\n

ProPublica told The Epoch Times in a previous report<\/a> that it didn\u2019t \u201cknow the identity of the source who provided this trove of information on the taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

ProPublica responded to a request for a comment on the case, saying: \u201cAs we reported from the first day the series appeared, we didn\u2019t know the identity of the source who provided this trove of IRS files. After careful deliberation, ProPublica published select, newsworthy tax details of some of the richest Americans to inform the debate about the fairness of our tax system. These stories clearly served the public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nWed, 06\/26\/2024 – 13:40<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/irs-apologizes-hedge-fund-magnate-over-leaked-tax-returns<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IRS Apologizes To Hedge Fund Magnate Over Leaked Tax Returns Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times, The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1473587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1473586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1473586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1473587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1473586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1473586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1473586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}