By Flint McColgan
Boston Herald
(TNS)
A former IRS agent with two decades of experience was sentenced to a year and a half in prison for ripping off the agency with false tax returns for others in which she pocketed portions of the refunds.
“The defendant Kathleen Mannion, with decades of experience as an Internal Revenue Service employee, scandalized that public service by using it to defraud the IRS, the Social Security Administration, and members of her own Native American tribe,” federal prosecutor John Mulcahy wrote in a sentencing memo. “Mannion victimized people who trusted her—exploiting that trust for her own personal benefit and to enrich herself at her victims’ expense.”
Mannion, 59, of Lawrence, MA, pleaded guilty last May to four counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation and filing of a false tax return and one count of theft of government money.
On Wednesday, U.S. Senior District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton sentenced her to 18 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release.
Prosecutors say that Mannion, who worked as an IRS contact representative in Andover from 1998 to 2009, used her membership in the Mi’kmaq Nation Native American tribe to solicit other tribe members to hire her for tax preparation services.
But from at least July 2020 through April 2023, “instead of giving her clients ethical and honest service, Mannion exploited their trust to line her own pockets and defraud the government,” the sentencing memo states.
In what prosecutors call a “two-pronged” scheme, Mannion created fictitious dependents for her her clients and listed them on the returns to both secure lower tax burdens and to receive thousands of dollars in payouts for these fake dependents from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (“CARES”) Act.
She would then set it up so that the refund would be split, with a portion going into her own personal bank account. Prosecutors say that her clients didn’t know about any of it.
Prosecutors say that Mannion also between April and October 2020 applied for Social Security retirement, spouse and widow benefits with the Social Security Administration using client names, without their knowledge, and had the money deposited into her own bank account.
Photo credit: LIgorko/iStock
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