What You Have to Know
- Charles Littlejohn stole tax info on 1000’s of rich Individuals and leaked it to a number of media shops.
- ProPublica famous it printed tales about tax knowledge that spanned greater than 15 years.
- Littlejohn pleaded responsible to a single cost that carries a jail time period so long as 5 years.
A former Inside Income Service contractor used a personal web site to retailer secret tax return info he stole about former President Donald Trump and leaked to the New York Occasions, court docket information present.
Charles Littlejohn, 38, pleaded responsible Oct. 12 to stealing Trump’s knowledge from the IRS and leaking it to the Occasions. He additionally stole tax return details about 1000’s of rich Individuals — together with Ken Griffin, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos — and leaked it to ProPublica.
The way wherein Littlejohn pulled off one of the crucial egregious safety breaches in IRS historical past was revealed Sunday in a court docket submitting.
Lawmakers and authorities watchdogs have repeatedly warned about about lax safeguards on the IRS, which processed 260 million tax returns final yr. The submitting mentioned nothing about Littlejohn’s motive.
How the Information Was Hidden
To keep away from detection, Littlejohn accessed Trump’s tax return and different info in late 2018 by querying an IRS database utilizing extra “generalized parameters” relatively than straight looking for the previous president’s knowledge, in accordance to the submitting.
He then uploaded the info to a private, non-public web site he managed relatively than downloading it to a bodily storage system or utilizing a distant storage web site.
That allowed him to “keep away from IRS protocols designed to detect and stop giant downloads or uploads” from company gadgets or methods, based on the submitting, which lays out the factual foundation for his responsible plea.
That day, he used a private laptop to obtain the info from the non-public web site, storing it in a number of places, together with private knowledge storage gadgets like his Apple iPod. In Could 2019, he contacted the Occasions about leaking Trump’s tax knowledge, disclosing it between August and October of that yr.
In September 2020 — weeks earlier than Trump misplaced the election to Joe Biden — the Occasions printed the primary of a number of tales, revealing he paid $750 in federal revenue taxes in 2016 and 2017, and no taxes in 10 of the earlier 15 years.
Littlejohn used an identical technique, together with a personal web site, to retailer knowledge he stole on 1000’s of the nation’s wealthiest folks earlier than leaking it to ProPublica, the submitting exhibits. They included billionaires Griffin, Bezos and Musk. The information outlet famous within the sequence it printed concerning the tax knowledge that it spanned greater than 15 years.
