On September 12, 2018, in the District of Oregon, Anndrea Jacobs was indicted for impersonating an employee of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), wire fraud, filing false tax returns, and aggravated identity theft.

According to the indictment, Jacobs was the office manager and bookkeeper for an Oregon medical practice. Jacobs devised a scheme to defraud a number of entities and individuals, including the owner of the medical practice, the IRS, the Oregon Department of Revenue (DOR), and others.

As part of her scheme, Jacobs exercised control over the books, records, and finances of the medical practice. Jacobs embezzled from her employer through a variety of actions and prepared and maintained false business financial books and records, from which she intentionally omitted payments to herself and other funds that she had diverted. Jacobs unlawfully used the name, Social Security Number, Oregon driver's license, and signature of the medical practice owner to open a bank account; stole checks intended as payment for the medical practice; redirected a medical practice check payable to the Oregon DOR to herself; and applied for a loan on behalf of the practice's owner without the owner's knowledge or consent.

In furtherance of her scheme, Jacobs provided the practice's owner with falsified e-mail messages and falsified bank statements purporting to show estimated tax payments made to the IRS and the Oregon DOR on behalf of both the medical practice and its owner. Additionally, she convinced the owner to give her a limited power of attorney to handle his collection action with the IRS and changed the owner's contact information with the IRS to her own address and phone number in order to divert all IRS correspondence and communications to herself.

Subsequently, Jacobs falsely pretended to be an officer and employee of the IRS. In doing so, Jacobs created a fictitious identity as an IRS Taxpayer Advocate named "Linda Gibson." She further established a phone number and voicemail account for the fictitious identity and provided the victim with a fictitious IRS case number. She then purported to assist the victim with his IRS collection issues, while impersonating "Linda Gibson."

Jacobs also willfully filed false individual tax returns for herself for five separate tax years. In addition, she filed four fraudulent individual tax returns for the victim, understating his business income and overstating estimated tax payments and expenses.

If convicted, Jacobs could face a maximum statutory sentence of 20 years' imprisonment, plus a mandatory two-year sentence for aggravated identity theft.

Source:  The facts in this case narrative come from the following publicly available document: D. Or. Indict. filed Sep. 12, 2018.