Former Irs Employee Charged With Fraud

A former employee of the Internal Revenue Service was indicted Friday by a federal grand jury, accused of using information gleaned from taxpayer records to acquire credit cards and run up charges she never paid.

Shelly M. Dawson, 41, of Seattle, was charged with 12 counts of wire fraud, one count of theft of public records and one count of credit-card fraud. Ms. Dawson is a former tax examining assistant for the IRS in Seattle.

According to the indictment, Ms. Dawson used an IRS computer terminal to access taxpayer records in Martinsburg, W.Va., and Ogden, Utah. The records included taxpayer names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and names of taxpayers’ banks.

In one case, the indictment alleges, she used information about a taxpayer to get a Chase Bank credit card in the taxpayer’s name, then ran up $4,860.66 in charges she did not pay.

Conviction on each of the 12 wire-fraud counts carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison; the credit-card fraud count is punishable by a maximum 10 years in prison.