Chiropractor Arrested for Bribing IRS Auditor

A chiropractor has been arrested for attempting to bribe an Internal Revenue Service auditor who questioned deductions the chiropractor had claimed for payments to two female patients who had accused him of inappropriately touching them.

Stephen Jacobs, 55, of Lowell, Mass., was arrested last Thursday for bribery of a public official. The complaint alleges that Jacobs paid an IRS auditor $5,000 in cash to ignore two deductions he improperly took on his 2011 income tax form. The deductions were actually payments that Jacobs had made to two different women because he touched them inappropriately during medical treatments in 2011 and 2012, according to prosecutors.

The IRS agent audited Jacobs last August and questioned several of the deductions he had claimed, including student loan expenses and business expenses, when the deductions for the two female patients came up, according to the Lowell Sun. The auditor disallowed the expenses, prompting Jacobs to ask the agent, “You are on the front line. Can’t we just deal with this?”

The agent then set up a secretly recorded call with Jacobs in which he suggested they could deal with the deductions at their next meeting. At the next meeting in September, Jacobs was told again that the expenses were disallowed and was asked for documentation for some of his other expenses. Jacobs then allegedly asked the auditor, “Do you want a bribe? Do you want me to pay you?”

The next meeting was secretly recorded on audio and video, allegedly showing Jacobs handing over $5,000 in cash to the auditor and receiving in exchange a no-change audit letter.

A probable cause hearing is scheduled for March 5. The case is being prosecuted by Eugenia M. Carris of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s Public Corruption Unit. Ortiz and Robert O’Malley, special agent in charge of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, announced the arrest.

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