US v. Reed: Reed owed years’ worth of unpaid taxes and was referred to the Abusive Tax Avoidance Transactions division of the IRS. There an IRS agent, acting under a pseudonym, directed Reed’s employer to garnish his wages. After he was unsuccessful convincing his employer not to do so he lost his job, then filed a series of documents against the IRS agent’s pseudonym stating she owed him a judgment. When IRS investigators came to Reed’s home, he admitted that he intended the false lien (and related paperwork) to “get the IRS to leave him alone.” As a result, he was charged with attempting to file a false lien against a federal employee and attempting to interfere with the administration of internal revenue laws. Reed was convicted on both counts at trial and sentenced to 60 months in prison.
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed Reed’s convictions and sentence. As to his conviction for attempting to file a false lien, the court rejected Reed’s argument that he could not be convicted under that statute because the lien was filed in the name of the IRS agent’s pseudonym. The pseudonym was still a real person, “no more fictious than George Eliot or Mark Twain,” and had impacted the agent’s credit history. As to the interference conviction, the court held that the IRS action involving Reed was the type of “targeted administrative action” required under the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the statute. The court also rejected several related Guideline arguments.
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