by Susan Ferrechio at The Washington Times
In one of the largest IRS data breaches in history, the tax records of more than 400,000 businesses and individuals were leaked to ProPublica by an IRS contractor who illegally accessed and downloaded the information between 2018 and 2020.
The IRS disclosed the information Tuesday to the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the data leak.
The disclosure follows reporting by The Washington Times that taxpayer information belonging to “hundreds of thousands” of taxpayers and businesses were illegally accessed and leaked to ProPublica by Charles Littlejohn, who is serving a five-year sentence for the crime.
The IRS disclosure shows the leak to the publication is far bigger than initially believed and has snared thousands of ordinary taxpayers and not just the ultra-wealthy, as both Littlejohn and ProPublica claimed. The IRS first disclosed it had mailed notices to 70,000 taxpayers informing them that their information, including Social Security numbers and other sensitive data, was leaked by Littlejohn. A new round of notices went out in December and the total impacted now amounts to nearly six times the initial estimate.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, called the scope of the tax leak “a massive scandal.”
In total,…
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