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April 2, 2020

IRS Employee Sentenced for the Unauthorized Disclosure of Suspicious Activity Reports

On January 15, 2020, in the Northern District of California, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee John C. Fry was sentenced for the unauthorized disclosure of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). Fry previously pled guilty to the offense in August 2019.

According to the court documents, Fry is an investigative analyst for IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) in San Francisco, California, and has worked for the IRS since 2008. In this position, he had access to various law enforcement databases, including the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Palantir, which is an analytic software used by IRS-CI. FinCEN manages the collection and maintenance of SARs, which financial institutions are required to generate under the Bank Secrecy Act to report potentially suspicious financial transactions. The disclosure of a SAR or its contents is unlawful, and employees or agents of Government authorities are prohibited from disclosing a SAR, or any information that would even reveal the existence of a SAR, except as necessary to fulfill official duties.

Fry admitted that on May 4, 2018, he logged on to the Palantir database from his work computer and downloaded five SARs related to Michael Cohen and his company, Essential Consultants. Fry then called Michael Avenatti, an attorney based in Newport Beach, California, twice from his personal cell phone. During those conversations, Fry verbally provided information contained in the five SARs to Avenatti. Fry also used one of his personal e-mail accounts to e-mail screenshots of the SARs to Avenatti. Fry admitted that on May 7, 2018, he logged on to the FinCEN database from his work computer and conducted additional searches related to Cohen and Essential Consultants. He then called Avenatti from his personal cell phone and verbally provided information contained in the searches. Fry admitted that he had no official reason in his capacity as an IRS investigative analyst to disclose SAR records related to Cohen or the various companies listed in the SARs.

On May 8, 2018, Avenatti circulated a dossier on his public Twitter account releasing the confidential banking information related to Cohen and Essential Consultants. On May 8, 2018, The Washington Post published an article that discussed in detail claims about Cohen's banking history made public in Avenatti's dossier. On May 12, 2018, Fry placed an outgoing call to a number later identified as being associated with a reporter. On May 16, 2018, The New Yorker published an article written by this reporter titled, "Missing Files Motivated the Leak of Michael Cohen's Financial Records." The article reported that the source, identified only as a law enforcement officer, grew alarmed after being unable to find two important SARs regarding Cohen's financial activity. In fact, access to the two SARs in question had been restricted and they were not available to all FinCEN users.

Fry was sentenced to five years' probation, including six months of electronic monitoring, for the unauthorized disclosure of SARs. Fry was also ordered to pay a fine in the amount of $5,000.00.

Source:  The facts in this case narrative come from the following publicly available documents: N.D. Cal. Crim. Compl. filed Feb. 4, 2019; N.D. Cal. Indict. filed Feb. 28, 2019; N.D. Cal. Plea Agr. filed Aug. 14, 2019; N.D. Cal. Crim. Minutes filed Jan. 15, 2020; and N.D. Cal. Judgement filed Jan. 16, 2020.