Celebrity Taxpayers Alec Baldwin, Tara Reid Among Dozens Rocked by Alleged IRS Breach
If you've ever wondered how far below the poverty line Tara Reid is living these days or what kind of child support Alec Baldwin doles out to Kim Basinger, there is a guy in Cincinnati named John Snyder who is living your dream right now. Illegally, of course, and maybe under threat of prison time, but still: Snyder, an IRS tax examiner, is accused of viewing the confidential records of 197 celebrities over the last five years, including Kevin Bacon, Sally Field, Vanna White, John Cleese, Portia De Rossi, Randy Quaid and even "the late Eddie Albert of the classic sitcom Green Acres." Eddie Albert! Has this man no shame? Maybe not, but you can bet he has a lawyer:
Snyder was caught when authorities audited who was accessing personal and tax information stored on a federal database called the Integrated Data Retrieval Systems, according to the affidavit.
Authorities said Snyder had access to the database, but works almost exclusively with business accounts and had no legitimate reason to review individual taxpayer accounts. ... Snyder, 56, faces up to a year in prison and a $250,000 fine at this time if found guilty of improperly accessing IRS data, a misdemeanor.
Come on, now — if learning the closely guarded truth about how much Vanna makes to laugh at Pat Sajak's jokes and stroke huge letters for a few hours a week doesn't constitute a "legitimate reason" to bump around a tax database, we don't know what does.
[Photo Credit: AFP]
