An Internal Revenue Service employee has pleaded guilty to illegally accessing the personal information of more than 200 celebrities and sports figures.
John Snyder could be sentenced to up to one year in prison, a year of supervised release and a $250,000 fine for looking up tax information on the VIPs between 2003 and 2008. They included Kevin Bacon, Alec Baldwin, Chevy Chase, John Cleese, Sally Field, Steffi Graf, Penny Marshall, Randy Quaid, Tara Reid, Portia De Rossi, Maura Tierney, Vanna White, former Cincinnati Reds players, Cincinnati Bengals coach Marvin Lewis and other notables .
"These kinds of allegations are serious, because it touches the lives of hundreds of people," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Alamdar Hamdani in a statement.
Snyder was charged in May with looking up the personal information without authorization. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration was conducting a routine analysis to look for suspicious accesses by IRS employees when it discovered numerous unauthorized accesses by him. Snyder is scheduled to be sentenced on August 20.
