On January 13, 2020, in the Northern District of West Virginia, Clinton Jean-Pierre of Miami, Florida, was sentenced for aggravated identity theft and accessing a computer and obtaining information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) eAuthentication online taxpayer system. Jean-Pierre was charged with the offenses in July 2019 and pled guilty in August 2019.

According to a U.S. Department of Justice press release, Jean-Pierre admitted to fraudulently accessing the IRS eAuthentication online taxpayer system in December 2017. Jean-Pierre admitted that in order to pass IRS security protocols, he had fraudulently "ported" an unknowing person's cellular telephone number to his own phone in order to obtain the security code necessary to create an unauthorized taxpayer account. Once in the IRS eAuthentication system, Jean-Pierre admitted that he gained access to a taxpayer's tax return information, which included the taxpayer's personal identifying information.

Jean-Pierre was sentenced to a mandatory 24 months' imprisonment for aggravated identity theft and 46 months' imprisonment for computer fraud, to be served consecutively, for a total of 70 months' imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release. In addition, Jean-Pierre was ordered to pay a special assessment fee of $200.

Source:  The facts in this case narrative come from the following publicly available documents: N.D.W.V. Information filed Jul. 30, 2019; N.D.W.V. Plea Agr. filed Aug. 29, 2019; N.D.W.V. DOJ Press Release dated Jan. 13, 2020; and N.D.W.V. Judgment filed Jan. 21, 2020.