UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

MIAMI DIVISION

KENNETH C. GRIFFIN,

 Plaintiff,

 v.

INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE and U.S. 

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY,

 Defendants.

Case No. 1:22-cv-24023-Scola/Goodman

Jury Trial Demanded

AMENDED COMPLAINT

For years, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) and the U.S. Department of Treasury 

(collectively, “Defendants”) have been warned by congressional committees, the Treasury 

Inspector General for Tax Administration (“TIGTA”), and the U.S. Government Accountability 

Office (“GAO”) of their repeated failures to adequately establish appropriate administrative, 

technical, and physical safeguards over their records systems to protect the sensitive, private, and 

confidential tax return information they receive from American taxpayers year after year. After 

flouting these warnings for over a decade, from as early as 2018 to at least 2021, IRS employee1

Charles “Chaz” Littlejohn (“Mr. Littlejohn”), likely together with other IRS employees, exploited 

those failures. Indeed, on October 12, 2023, Mr. Littlejohn pled guilty to a violation of 26 U.S.C. 

1 The IRS’s Internal Revenue Manual (“IRM”) defines “[e]mployee” as “all IRS 

personnel” including “all contractors who have staff-like access.” See IRS Unauthorized Access, 

Attempted Access, Or Inspection of Taxpayer Records (“UNAX”) Program Policy, Guidance, and 

Requirements (“UNAX Policy”), IRM § 10.5.5.1.6(2). According to the IRS, “staff-like access” 

means “when a contracted individual is granted access to IRS facilities or IRS systems, or has 

opportunity to be exposed to IRS information.” See id. § 10.5.5.1.6(3).

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§ 7213(a)(1) for unlawful disclosure of confidential tax return information and admitted that, while 

working for the IRS, Defendants provided him access to “IRS data associated with thousands of 

the nation’s wealthiest people, including returns and return information dating back over 15 years,”

and then he used that access to unlawfully inspect and repeatedly disclose confidential tax return 

information to various media outlets. The confidential tax return information that Mr. Littlejohn 

unlawfully inspected and disclosed included the private information of Plaintiff Kenneth C. Griffin 

(“Mr. Griffin”).

Accordingly, Mr. Griffin, by and through his undersigned counsel, brings this action 

against the IRS and the U.S. Department of Treasury to seek redress for the IRS’s unlawful 

inspections and disclosures of Mr. Griffin’s confidential tax return information in violation of 26 

U.S.C. § 6103 as well as Defendants’ violation of the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a, for their willful 

and intentional failure to establish appropriate administrative, technical, and/or physical 

safeguards over their records system to insure the security and confidentiality of Mr. Griffin’s 

confidential tax return information. 

INTRODUCTION

1. Mr. Griffin, a self-made entrepreneur and investor, is the founder and Chief 

Executive Officer of Citadel, a global alternative investment firm, and a founder and the nonExecutive Chairman of Citadel Securities, a leading global market maker. He is proud of his 

success and has always sought to pay his fair share of taxes. Indeed, Mr. Griffin apparently pays 

federal income taxes at a higher effective tax rate than many of the top wage earners in the United 

States.2 

2 ProPublica, America’s Top 15 Earners and What They Reveal About the U.S. Tax System, 

PROPUBLICA, April 13, 2022, https://www.propublica.org/article/americas-top-15-earners-andwhat-they-reveal-about-the-us-tax-system.

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2. Mr. Griffin has complied with the IRS’s annual requirements to report his personal 

and confidential financial information, and he did so—like virtually all Americans—believing that 

the IRS would comply with its own legal obligations to safeguard and protect his information from 

unauthorized inspection and disclosure, as required by Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code

as well as the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a. It did not. 

3. Instead, from as early as 2018 through at least 2020, IRS personnel (including 

Mr. Littlejohn) violated 26 U.S.C. § 6103 by exploiting the IRS’s willful failure to establish 

adequate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards for the IRS’s data and records systems 

to: 1) repeatedly and unlawfully inspect and misappropriate confidential tax return information for 

the highest earning U.S. taxpayers, including Mr. Griffin; and 2) unlawfully disclose those 

materials to ProPublica for publication.

4. For example, in or around September 2020, Mr. Littlejohn contacted and discussed 

with ProPublica the possibility of giving the media outlet a copy of the confidential tax return 

information of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years, including 

the confidential tax return information that Mr. Griffin reported to the IRS. Then, from 

September 2020 through November 2020, Mr. Littlejohn—enabled by the systemic IRS security 

failures described above and in more detail below—unlawfully disclosed this information to 

ProPublica in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 6103. ProPublica went on to boast that the information it

obtained was “not just tax returns,” but also included “information that is sent to the IRS about 

financial activities” such as “income and taxes,” “investments, stock trades, gambling winnings 

and even the results of audits.”3 Significantly, ProPublica identified the IRS as the source of the 

3 ProPublica, The Inside Story of How We Reported the Secret IRS Files, PROPUBLICA,

August 6, 2021, https://www.propublica.org/article/the-inside-story-of-how-we-reported-thesecret-irs-files. 

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confidential information it published, including Mr. Griffin’s return information. 

5. In or around March 2022, Mr. Griffin came to know about the IRS’s unlawful 

disclosures and violations of the Privacy Act when he learned that ProPublica intended to publish 

a story “about the highest earning Americans, in which [ProPublica] plan[ned] to mention several 

dozen people including [Mr.] Griffin,” as well as another story contrasting the relatively high 

effective income tax rate that Mr. Griffin pays with the apparently lower effective tax rate paid by 

the CEO of one of Citadel Securities’ commercial competitors. 

6. On April 13, 2022 and on July 7, 2022, ProPublica published confidential tax return 

information regarding Mr. Griffin’s 2013-2018 federal income tax years, including Mr. Griffin’s 

purported average annual income, purported percent of income deducted, and purported average 

effective federal income tax rate for those periods.4 In publishing the information, ProPublica 

acknowledged that it was the confidential tax return information of “people who, in good faith, 

sent their tax and personal and private information to the Internal Revenue Service with no 

expectation that it would ever be made public.”

5

 

7. To date, ProPublica has published nearly 50 articles using the tax returns and 

confidential tax return information Mr. Littlejohn provided to ProPublica. It is clear why 

Mr. Griffin’s and these other taxpayers’ confidential tax return information was and continues to 

be so readily available to ProPublica: the IRS’s well-known, systemic failures to establish 

4 Paul Kiel & Mick Dumke, Ken Griffin Spent $54 Million Fighting a Tax Increase for the 

Rich. Secret IRS Data Shows It Paid Off for Him, PROPUBLICA, June 7, 2022, 

https://www.propublica.org/article/ken-griffin-illinois-graduated-income-tax; ProPublica, 

America’s Top 15 Earners and What They Reveal About the U.S. Tax System, PROPUBLICA,

April 13, 2022, https://www.propublica.org/article/americas-top-15-earners-and-what-theyreveal-about-the-us-tax-system.

5 ProPublica, The Inside Story of How We Reported the Secret IRS Files, PROPUBLICA,

August 6, 2021, https://www.propublica.org/article/the-inside-story-of-how-we-reported-thesecret-irs-files. 

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appropriate safeguards to protect taxpayers’ confidential return information from unauthorized and 

unlawful inspection and disclosure.

8. Federal agencies depend on information technology systems and electronic data to 

carry out operations and to process, maintain, and report essential information. Every year from 

fiscal year 2010 through 2020, however, TIGTA has put the IRS on notice that deficiencies in its

“Security Over Taxpayer Data and Protection of IRS Resources” were the IRS’s “number one 

major management and performance challenge area.”

6

 

9. Despite annual audits, TIGTA—for more than a decade—continued to find 

systemic failures by the IRS to establish appropriate administrative, technical, and physical 

safeguards to adequately protect against the unlawful disclosure of taxpayers’ confidential tax 

return information. For example, in its Annual Assessment of the IRS’s Information Technology 

Program for Fiscal Year 2020, TIGTA revealed that the IRS failed to use “encryption algorithms” 

in accordance with the Federal Processing Standards 140-2, Security Requirements for 

Cryptographic Modules for certain operating systems in order to keep confidential tax return 

information “unreadable for an unauthorized user.”7 Likewise, TIGTA reported that 2 out of 5 of 

the IRS’s Cybersecurity Framework functions (i.e., Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover) 

“were deemed as ‘not effective.’”8 TIGTA also identified myriad security deficiencies for the IRS 

system that collects, converts, and stores a taxpayer’s confidential tax return information into 

6

See TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR TAX ADMINISTRATION, Report No. 2021-20-

001, ANNUAL ASSESSMENT OF THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE’S INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 

PROGRAM FOR FISCAL YEAR 2020, at 6 (October 2020).

7

See id. at 22. 

8

See id. at 9.

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electronic records of taxpayer data,

9

including “more than 16,000 policy violations.”

10 In other 

instances, “the IRS inappropriately assigned business role accounts to an administrator group, 

resulting in those accounts [and thus inappropriate employees] having unnecessary elevated 

privileges.”11 Notably, TIGTA found that the IRS “lacked management oversight to ensure that 

Federal and [Internal Revenue Manual] requirements are met” and, in “critical areas” housing 

computer rooms, “the IRS cannot control the movement of individuals and eliminate unnecessary 

traffic throughout this critical security area [to] reduce the opportunity for unauthorized disclosure 

or theft of tax information.”12 

10. The IRS is and has for some time been well aware of these data security failures, 

including the unlawful disclosure of Mr. Griffin’s confidential tax return information at issue in 

this lawsuit. Presciently, on April 18, 2022, more than a year before Mr. Littlejohn was criminally 

charged, members of Congress confirmed that there “is little doubt” that the confidential tax return 

information disclosed to ProPublica, including Mr. Griffin’s confidential tax return information, 

“came from inside the IRS” and that the disclosure was “precisely what 26 U.S.C. § 6103 and 

related statutes were designed to prevent—the disclosure of private tax information and the 

political weaponization of that information.”13 

9 TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR TAX ADMINISTRATION, Report No. 2020-20-006, 

ACTIVE DIRECTORY OVERSIGHT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT, at 1-2 (February 2020).

10 Id. at Highlights.

11 Id. 

12 Id. at 6. 

13 Letter from Congressman Kevin Brady and Senator Mike Crapo to The Honorable Janet 

Yellen, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Treasury (April 18, 2022), https://gopwaysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/4-18-2022-Brady-Crapo-toYellen_FINAL.pdf.

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11. Despite these warnings and clearly illegal disclosures to ProPublica, however, the 

IRS continued—and on information and belief, continues—to willfully and intentionally fail to 

establish adequate safeguards to protect Mr. Griffin’s and other taxpayers’ confidential tax return 

information. For example, “the IRS continues cloud deployments [that contain taxpayer data] 

despite not having a fully implemented security control infrastructure in place.”14 In so doing, the 

“IRS implemented cloud services with known capability gaps that remain in the areas of identity 

and access management, continuous security monitoring, data and infrastructure protection, and 

program management and integration.”

15 In other instances, even when the IRS agreed with 

TIGTA recommendations to take corrective actions and perform database vulnerability scanning 

enterprise-wide by 2016, “the IRS made an executive decision, without following proper 

procedures or policy, to reduce vulnerability scanning of databases.”

16

 What is more, the IRS 

concealed its decision until TIGTA started a review in November 2020, at which time “the IRS 

officially announced the reduction in database vulnerability scanning, three years after it had 

actually reduced database vulnerability scanning.”17 Although computer mainframes are 

considered High Value Assets, the “IRS has not performed database vulnerability scanning on [its]

14 TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR TAX ADMINISTRATION, Report No. 2022-20-052, 

CLOUD SERVICES WERE IMPLEMENTED WITHOUT KEY SECURITY CONTROLS, PLACING TAXPAYER 

DATA AT RISK, at Highlights (September 27, 2022).

15 Id. at 6.

16 TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR TAX ADMINISTRATION, Report No. 2022-20-065, 

THE IRS NEEDS TO IMPROVE ITS DATABASE VULNERABILITY SCANNING AND PATCHING 

CONTROLS, at Highlights, 3 (September 30, 2022).

17 Id. at 4.

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International Business Machines (IBM) mainframes since 2018,”

18 and according to TIGTA, “the 

IRS is not timely patching database vulnerabilities.”19

12. The IRS also failed to meet its obligations by failing to establish safeguards that 

included “centralized oversight of contractor [data security] training.”

20 And, despite this 

identified gap in data security, the IRS “has not conducted an initial risk assessment to identify 

whether its method of sharing the data electronically [with contractors] appropriately protects 

taxpayer information,”

21 nor does the IRS “have a supplemental policy or guidance that requires a 

risk assessment to be performed prior to transferring taxpayer information to contractors.”22

13. These pervasive data security failures, and the refusal by IRS employees to correct 

these failures, allowed Mr. Littlejohn to repeatedly inspect and then misappropriate the 

confidential tax return information of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers, including 

Mr. Griffin; upload that data to a private website; and then disclose that return information to 

ProPublica in or about November 2020. 

14. Since ProPublica began using the confidential tax return information of thousands 

of taxpayers that it received from the IRS, members of Congress have repeatedly demanded to 

know how the IRS and the Treasury Department could have allowed these unlawful disclosures to 

18 Id. at 4-6.

19 Id. at Highlights.

20 See U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, GAO-23-105395, SECURITY OF 

TAXPAYER INFORMATION, IRS NEEDS TO ADDRESS CRITICAL SAFEGUARD WEAKNESSES, at 31

(August 2023).

21 See id. at 52.

22 See id.

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happen.23 Members of the House Ways and Means Committee sent letters on June 9, 2021, 

June 11, 2021, June 17, 2021, April 18, 2022, and October 27, 2022 to Treasury Secretary Janet

Yellen, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. 

Russell George, and Acting Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Treasury Richard 

Delmar, and also asked questions at hearings on June 17, 2021 and June 8, 2022, to obtain 

information “about the actions that led to the massive leak of private taxpayer information in June 

2021 to ProPublica.”24 Likewise, Mr. Griffin repeatedly requested that Defendants provide him 

information relevant to the unlawful disclosure of his own confidential tax return information to 

ProPublica, and demanded that Defendants “send a formal demand to ProPublica to return (and 

destroy any copies therewith) all of the confidential IRS data ProPublica has in its possession, 

custody, or control.” 

15. Defendants responded to both Congress and Mr. Griffin with brazen 

stonewalling. It was not until September 29, 2023—more than two years after ProPublica began 

publishing articles with the confidential return information it received from the IRS and nearly a 

year after Mr. Griffin filed his initial complaint in this action—when the United States finally 

charged Mr. Littlejohn and at least some information was made public.25 Even then, despite 

23 See, e.g., Letter from Congressman Kevin Brady and Senator Mike Crapo to The 

Honorable Janet Yellen, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Treasury (April 18, 2022), 

https://gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/4-18-2022-Brady-Crapo-toYellen_FINAL.pdf; see also The Financial Stability Oversight Council Annual Report to 

Congress: Hearing Before the S. Banking Comm. (May 10, 2022), 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ObS-QV0OEw, at approximately 1:29. 

24 See Letter from Congresspeople Kevin Brady, Jodey Arrington, and David Kustoff to 

The Honorable Janet Yellen, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Treasury (October 27, 2022), 

https://gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/10.27.22-ProPublica-LeakLetter.pdf. 

25 In fact, Defendants’ initial motion to dismiss—before falling moot following the 

announcement of the criminal charges against Littlejohn—was premised in large part on the 

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publicly charging one of Defendants’ employees in connection with the scheme to expose 

Mr. Griffin’s confidential information, Defendants are continuing to double-down on their 

stonewalling of Mr. Griffin. Among other things, Defendants refuse to provide Mr. Griffin with 

any additional information concerning the obvious connection between the unlawful inspections 

and disclosures of his confidential tax return information to ProPublica and the well-documented 

failures of the IRS to take seriously its obligations to establish appropriate safeguards to protect 

the confidential tax return information of United States taxpayers. Nor has the IRS provided any 

concrete assurance by specifying anything it is doing to prevent these harmful breaches from 

recurring.

16. In enacting 26 U.S.C. §§ 6103 and 7431, as well as 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(10), 

Congress unequivocally declared its intent to safeguard the confidentiality of U.S. taxpayers’ tax 

return information, including Mr. Griffin’s confidential tax return information, and to hold the IRS 

to account for failing to adequately do so. By this lawsuit, Mr. Griffin respectfully requests that 

the Court provide damages and injunctive relief to enforce Congress’s promise.

JURISDICTION AND VENUE

17. This Court has jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1340, 1346, 26 U.S.C. 

§ 7431(a), and 5 U.S.C. § 552a(g)(1)(D). 

18. Venue is proper in this judicial district pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1402 because Mr. 

Griffin resides in this judicial district. 

argument that Defendants could not ascertain how Mr. Griffin’s tax records had been disclosed to 

ProPublica or who had disclosed them. 

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THE PARTIES26

19. Plaintiff Kenneth C. Griffin is a citizen of the United States and a resident of Miami, 

Florida.

20. Defendant U.S. Department of the Treasury is an Executive Department of the 

United States of America and oversees the IRS and TIGTA.

21. Defendant Internal Revenue Service is a bureau of the U.S. Department of the 

Treasury and is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Internal Revenue Code. 

22. Charles Edward Littlejohn is a person who has held himself out to be a Data Process 

Management employee of the IRS from July 2012 through the present. Upon information and 

belief, Mr. Littlejohn either worked directly for the IRS or worked as an IRS contractor from 2008 

through 2021, including specifically from 2008 to 2010, from 2012 to 2013, and from 2017 to 

2021. 

23. At all relevant times, Mr. Littlejohn was an officer or employee of the United States 

by virtue of his employment with or for the IRS,27 because he had staff-like access to returns and 

confidential tax return information,28 because he held himself out to the public as an employee of 

the IRS from 2012 through the present, because he was a member of a group for which only IRS 

employees are allowed membership,29 and because Defendants had and exercised the power to 

26 Defendants, as the United States, are proper party defendants in this action and have 

waived sovereign immunity pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 7431 and 5 U.S.C. § 552a(g)(1)(D).

27 See supra, n.1; see also, e.g., IRM § 7.11.13.1.1(3) (“All IRS employees (including 

managers, executives and contractors) are responsible for protecting the confidentiality and 

privacy of taxpayer information to which they have access.”) (emphasis added). 

28 Mr. Littlejohn falls squarely within the IRM’s definition of “[e]mployee” because he had 

staff-like access to IRS facilities and IRS systems. See supra, n.1. 

29 Mr. Littlejohn is a member of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) [unofficial] group on 

LinkedIn, which “is established to connect only present employees across various segments and 

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control the detailed physical performance of Mr. Littlejohn’s work.

24. Indeed, the IRS (including IRS Contracting Officer Representatives)

30 exercised 

extensive, detailed, day-to-day supervision of Mr. Littlejohn’s work, particularly at IRS facilities 

and with IRS data systems, and by, among other things: managing the scope and purpose of Mr. 

Littlejohn’s daily tasks and projects; ensuring that Mr. Littlejohn completed required training, 

monitoring Mr. Littlejohn’s technical performance; ensuring Mr. Littlejohn was aware of data 

safeguards and appropriately protecting taxpayer information; and exercising control over the 

parameters of Mr. Littlejohn’s access to IRS data and confidential tax return information, including 

Mr. Griffin’s confidential tax return information. Moreover, the IRS also had authority to 

reprimand and/or terminate Mr. Littlejohn. According to the IRS, all IRS employees—i.e., “all 

IRS personnel,” which “[a]lso includes all contractors who have staff-like access”31—“may be 

subject to administrative penalties for the willful and unauthorized attempted access of their own 

or another taxpayer’s records.”32 IRS administrative penalties include, but are not limited to,

removal of employees and suspension of employees.

service centers” and “note[s] that all LinkedIn profiles will be checked prior to approval into the 

IRS group.” See https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-littlejohn-710bb660/; and 

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/156949/. 

30 Contracting Officer Representatives are “IRS employees who oversee day-to-day 

operations of contracts and contractors.” See U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, GAO23-105395, SECURITY OF TAXPAYER INFORMATION, IRS NEEDS TO ADDRESS CRITICAL 

SAFEGUARD WEAKNESSES, at 35 (August 2023).

31 See IRM § 10.5.5.1.6(2) and (3). 

32 IRM § 10.5.5.2(2).

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FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS 

I. The IRS Willfully Failed To Establish Appropriate Administrative, Technical, And 

Physical Safeguards To Insure The Security And Confidentiality Of Mr. Griffin’s 

Confidential Tax Return Information. 

25. The IRS relies extensively on computerized systems of records to support its 

financial and mission-related operations. The IRS knows and has known that without effective 

security controls, the IRS’s systems of records are vulnerable to, among other things, malicious 

efforts by IRS employees or contractors to illicitly obtain and misappropriate confidential taxpayer 

information. 

26. As detailed above, however, TIGTA has put the IRS on notice for a decade that 

deficiencies in its “Security Over Taxpayer Data and Protection of IRS Resources” were the

agency’s “number one major management and performance challenge area.”

33 Despite being 

aware of its security deficiencies for over a decade, the IRS willfully failed to establish appropriate 

administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to insure the security of confidential tax return 

information, including Mr. Griffin’s confidential tax return information.

27. For example, the IRS uses Microsoft Active Directory (“Microsoft AD”) services 

for its data security systems, including to facilitate secure user logon, access authorization, and 

credentialed validation for Windows laptops, desktops, and servers for all IRS employees, 

contractors, and business applications that interact with these computers.34 The IRS is also 

supposed to use Microsoft AD to enforce the Internal Revenue Manual and operational standards 

33 SEE TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR TAX ADMINISTRATION, Report No. 2021-20-

001, ANNUAL ASSESSMENT OF THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE’S INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 

PROGRAM FOR FISCAL YEAR 2020, at 6 (October 2020).

34 See TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR TAX ADMINISTRATION, Report No. 2018-20-

034, ACTIVE DIRECTORY OVERSIGHT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT AND CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION 

COMPUTER ROOMS LACK MINIMUM SECURITY CONTROLS, at 1 (June 2018).

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for all Windows laptops, desktops, servers, user accounts, and service accounts.35 In short, the 

IRS is supposed to use Microsoft AD to establish appropriate administrative, technical, and 

physical safeguards to protect Mr. Griffin’s confidential taxpayer information by, among other 

things, centralizing management of computers and users for data security purposes.36 

28. In September 2011, over a decade ago, TIGTA reported that “the IRS did not 

enforce the centralization of its Windows environment,” thus failing to establish safeguards to 

“achieve[] consistent identity and authentication management, [as] required by Federal regulations 

and IRS enterprise architecture security principles.”37 The IRS also “did not ensure that all 

Windows computers connected to its network were authorized and compliant with security policy, 

putting the IRS at risk of security breaches.”38 And, although the IRS created standards to prevent 

unauthorized computers from being connected to the network, “it had not established a central 

controlling authority to enforce compliance with its policy.”39 In response, TIGTA recommended 

that the IRS establish a governing body that would, among other things, finalize and enforce 

security design criteria, develop standards, and ensure that unauthorized data systems are not 

implemented.40 

29. Seven years later, in 2018, after auditing the IRS’s implementation of TIGTA’s 

recommendation to establish certain technical and physical data security safeguards, TIGTA

35 Id. 

36 Id. 

37 Id. (citing TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR TAX ADMINISTRATION, Report No. 2011-

20-111, CONTINUED CENTRALIZATION OF THE WINDOWS ENVIRONMENT WOULD IMPROVE 

ADMINISTRATION AND SECURITY EFFICIENCIES (Sept. 2011)).

38 Report No. 2018-20-034 at 2.

39 Id. 

40 Id. 

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found, among other things, 88 physical security control weaknesses and over 1,700 improperly 

configured user accounts.

41

 TIGTA also found that the IRS’s Windows Policy Checker was out 

of date and used three-year-old technical guidelines to conduct its analysis.42 As a result, TIGTA

concluded “the IRS cannot ensure that sensitive taxpayer information and taxpayer dollars are 

preserved and protected.”43

30. The IRS continued its failure to implement appropriate safeguards through at least 

Fiscal Year 2020. For example, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 

(“FISMA”) required the IRS to establish appropriate administrative, technical, and physical 

safeguards over its system of records by, among other things, developing, documenting, and 

implementing an agencywide information security program that provides security for the 

information and information systems that support the operations and assets of the agency, 

including those provided or managed by contractors. In its Annual Assessment of the Internal 

Revenue Service’s Information Technology Program for Fiscal Year 2020, however, TIGTA

reported the following IRS failures, among others: 

• 40% of the IRS’s Cybersecurity Framework Function Areas Were 

Deemed “Not Effective.”44 Two out of five Cybersecurity Framework 

function areas (i.e., Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover) were 

deemed “not effective.”45 Notably, the IRS failed to effectively establish the 

organizational understanding to manage cybersecurity risks to systems, 

assets, and capabilities (i.e., the Identify function) and also failed to effectively 

establish and implement the appropriate activities to identify the occurrence of 

a cybersecurity event (i.e., the Detect function). 

41 Id. at Highlights.

42 Id.

43 Id. at 5. 

44 See Report No. 2021-20-001, at 7-9. 

45 Id. at 9. 

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• Numerous Physical Security Violations in FY2020.

46

 The IRS is aware that 

physical security controls are important for protecting computer facilities and 

resources from espionage, sabotage, damage, and theft. In Fiscal Year 2020, 

TIGTA performed site visits at six IRS locations to evaluate the physical 

security controls protecting the computer rooms housing the systems that 

collect, convert, and store a taxpayer’s confidential tax return information into 

electronic records of taxpayer data. Among other violations, TIGTA found six 

violations of the Limited Access policies in three of the six locations visited, 

where visitors and employees with access to larger processing areas also had 

“uncontrolled access to the computer room” that housed these data systems. 

Moreover, TIGTA also found “multifactor authentication has not been 

implemented, as required, for any of the Limited Area computer rooms in the 

six locations audited.” 

• Access Management – 16,000 Account Policy Violations.47 Access 

management processes help to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and 

availability of assets by ensuring that only authorized users are able to access 

or modify them. In Fiscal Year 2020, TIGTA performed two audits covering 

the IRS’s access management systems over 16,000 violations of the Internal 

Revenue Manual 10.8.1, Information Technology (IT) Security – Policy and 

Guidance requirements. Notably, TIGTA’s audit of controls to authenticate 

third-party authorization requests revealed that 54% of the employees audited 

had unneeded access privileges to the IRS Centralized Authorization File—

i.e., the computerized system of records which houses authorization 

information from both powers of attorney and tax information authorizations. 

Of the 54% of unauthorized users, 31% of them initiated actions to modify 

Centralized Authorization File authorizations between January 2, 2020 and 

February 29, 2020, despite these employees having jobs such as mail clerks, 

file supervisors, facility management, or computer assistant, none of which 

require them to change or add taxpayer authorizations to the Centralized 

Authorization File system. 

• Failure to Implement Encryption Algorithms.48 The IRS is supposed to use 

cryptography—i.e., encryption algorithms that convert data into a format that 

is unreadable for unauthorized users—allowing confidential information to be 

transmitted or stored without unauthorized entities decoding it back into a 

readable format. In Fiscal Year 2020, the Government Accountability Office 

(“GAO”) performed an audit of the IRS’s information system security controls 

and found that the IRS failed to establish and implement cryptographic 

mechanisms to secure data in IRS systems that process taxpayer data. The 

GAO also found that the IRS failed to enforce the use of encryption algorithms 

46 Id. at 13-14. 

47 Id. at 21-22. 

48 Id. at 22.

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as required by the Federal Information Processing Standards 140-2, Security 

Requirements for Cryptographic Modules for certain operating systems. 

31. Similarly, TIGTA has found that the IRS failed to establish safeguards allowing the 

IRS to even detect, much less prevent, unauthorized access to confidential tax return information. 

Indeed, on July 31, 2020, TIGTA revealed that “the IRS could not provide an accurate inventory 

of all applications that store or process taxpayer data and [Personally Identifiable Information].”

49

 

In fact, 91% of monitored applications provided either “incomplete and inaccurate audit trails” or 

“no audit trails” at all.50 Likewise, on September 14, 2022, TIGTA reported that the IRS’s “current 

[physical security] processes do not ensure that recommended minimum security countermeasures 

are tracked and considered,”

51 particularly “because the IRS does not consistently use a centralized 

system to track physical security countermeasures, recommendations, approvals, implementation 

actions, and associated costs.”52

32. Apparently untroubled by these data security failures, the IRS put and continues to 

put Mr. Griffin’s and other United States taxpayers’ confidential tax return information at risk. 

The IRS’s policies and procedures require that IRS employees, including contractor-employees

such as Mr. Littlejohn, complete annual IRS-provided data security training before giving them 

49 See TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR TAX ADMINISTRATION, Report No. 2020-20-

033, MOST INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE APPLICATIONS DO NOT HAVE SUFFICIENT AUDIT TRAILS 

TO DETECT UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO SENSITIVE INFORMATION, at 2 (July 31, 2020). 

50 Id. at Highlights, 2.

51 TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR TAX ADMINISTRATION, Report No. 2022-10-046, 

THE PROCESS FOR TRACKING PHYSICAL SECURITY WEAKNESSES IDENTIFIED IN IRS FACILITIES 

DOES NOT ENSURE THAT VULNERABILITIES ARE PROPERLY ADDRESSED, at 6 (September 14, 2022)

(cleaned up).

52 Id. at Highlights.

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access to confidential tax return information.

53

 The IRS is also required to monitor and remove 

access to confidential tax return information if they do not keep up to date with the required annual 

training.54 Despite these requirements, however, a recent report by the GAO that “evaluate[d] the 

extent to which [the] IRS is following its tax safeguards for protecting taxpayer information”55

found that the IRS failed to establish “centralized oversight of contractor [UNAX and data 

security] training,”56 and thus, the “IRS has no measure to use to assess contractor training 

completion rates.”57 Based on the GAO’s analysis, most of the UNAX and data security training 

modules it audited had a completion rate among contractors between 61% to 69% for fiscal year 

2021, and none of them had a completion rate among contractors over 74%.

58

 Accordingly, on 

information and belief, the IRS has habitually violated its own policies and procedures by 

providing IRS personnel (including Mr. Littlejohn59) access to confidential tax return information 

regardless of whether they complete or remain up to date with all of the required annual privacy 

and data security training. 

53 See U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, GAO-23-105395, SECURITY OF 

TAXPAYER INFORMATION, IRS NEEDS TO ADDRESS CRITICAL SAFEGUARD WEAKNESSES, at 30-31

(August 2023).

54 See id. 

55 Id. at 3. 

56 Id. at 31. 

57 Id. at 32.

58 Id. at 30, Table 3. 

59 Consistent with the inexcusably low completion rates of UNAX and data security 

training among IRS personnel that the GAO reported, the Factual Basis for Mr. Littlejohn’s plea 

agreement also suggests that he did not receive all of the data security training required by the 

IRS’s policies and procedures, particularly as the Factual Basis notes that Mr. Littlejohn only 

received “regular” (but not all of the required) training about protecting taxpayer data over the 

course of his employment with the IRS between 2008 and 2021. See United States v. Charles 

Edward Littlejohn, 1:23-cr-00343-ACR ECF 9 ¶ 4 (D.D.C. Oct. 12, 2023).

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33. Separately, the IRS is obligated to develop Plans of Action and Milestones 

(“POA&M”) for IRS systems to document its planned remediation of weaknesses. According to 

POA&M Standard Operating Procedures, “critical and high-risk vulnerabilities that cannot be 

remediated within 30 to 60 calendar days should be documented as POA&Ms in the Treasury 

Department’s FISMA Information Management System or the Authorizing Official should pursue 

a risk-based decision.”60 TIGTA recently sampled 10 FISMA systems from the IRS’s database 

vulnerability scanning tool’s report that required POA&Ms, and on September 14, 2022, TIGTA 

reported that POA&Ms “were not created for database vulnerabilities” and “concluded that the 

IRS lacked managerial oversight to ensure that it appropriately documented corrective actions.”61 

As a result, “the IRS cannot ensure that it is correcting and managing its information security 

weaknesses [...] thereby exposing its systems to increased risk that nefarious actors will exploit 

the deficiencies to gain unauthorized access to information resources.”62

34. The IRS’s failure to establish appropriate administrative, technical, and physical 

safeguards over its systems of records has been willful, at the very least, and Mr. Littlejohn 

exploited these willful failures to repeatedly inspect and misappropriate Mr. Griffin’s confidential 

tax return information and unlawfully disclose that information to ProPublica for further 

publication. 

II. IRS Personnel Repeatedly And Unlawfully Inspected And Unlawfully Disclosed 

Mr. Griffin’s Confidential Tax Return Information.

35. In response to a series of stories that ProPublica published in 2018 regarding how 

60 TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR TAX ADMINISTRATION, Report No. 2022-20-065, 

THE IRS NEEDS TO IMPROVE ITS DATABASE VULNERABILITY SCANNING AND PATCHING 

CONTROLS, at 9 (September 30, 2022).

61 Id.

62 Id. 

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IRS budget cuts led to “an exodus of revenue agents, the kind of auditors [ProPublica claims] who 

really understand taxes and looked at corporations and the wealthy in particular,”

63 Mr. Littlejohn

exploited the IRS’s willful failures to establish adequate administrative, technical, and physical 

safeguards for the IRS’s data and records systems by repeatedly inspecting and misappropriating 

confidential tax return information for the highest-earning U.S. taxpayers, including Mr. Griffin’s 

confidential tax return information for federal income tax years 2013-2018. Mr. Littlejohn then 

intentionally and maliciously disclosed those materials to ProPublica for further publication.

36. Specifically, from as early as July 2020 through at least August 2020, on 

information and belief, Mr. Littlejohn exploited at least the following IRS data security failures—

which should have been well-known within the IRS given the repeated and public nature of the 

reports highlighting those failures—to repeatedly and unlawfully inspect as well as misappropriate 

Mr. Griffin’s and thousands of others’ confidential tax return information: 

• The IRS’s failure to “ensure that all Windows computers connected to its 

network were authorized and compliant with security policy,”

64 which 

allowed IRS personnel (including Mr. Littlejohn) to use virtual machines that 

simulated physical computers to avoid IRS protocols designed to detect and 

prevent large downloads or uploads from IRS devices or systems; 

• The IRS’s failure to adequately establish the organizational understanding to 

manage cybersecurity risks,65 which allowed Mr. Littlejohn to repeatedly 

access, inspect, and misappropriate Mr. Griffin’s and thousands of other 

taxpayers’ confidential return information without detection by uploading 

the data to a private website; and

• The IRS’s failure to use adequate encryption algorithms that convert data 

into a format that is unreadable for unauthorized users,66 which allowed 

63

 ProPublica, The Inside Story of How We Reported the Secret IRS Files, PROPUBLICA,

August 6, 2021, https://www.propublica.org/article/the-inside-story-of-how-we-reported-thesecret-irs-files. 

64 Report No. 2018-20-034 at 2.

65 See Report No. 2021-20-001, at 7-9. 

66 Id. at 22.

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Mr. Littlejohn to store and transmit Mr. Griffin’s and thousands of other 

taxpayers’ confidential tax return information to ProPublica on a personal 

data storage device, while also allowing ProPublica to decode the data into 

a readable format after the unlawful disclosures. 

37. In or about September 2020, including Mr. Littlejohn contacted and discussed with 

ProPublica the possibility of unlawfully disclosing a copy of Mr. Griffin’s and thousands of others’ 

confidential tax return information to them. Then, from as early as September 2020 to at least 

November 2020, Mr. Littlejohn—enabled by the systemic security failures described above—

unlawfully disclosed Mr. Griffin’s and thousands of others’ confidential tax return information to 

ProPublica on a personally-owned storage device.

38. In or around March 2022, Mr. Griffin learned that ProPublica was in possession of 

his confidential tax return information, along with the confidential tax return information “of 

thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years.”67 The information 

ProPublica obtained was “not just tax returns,” but also included “information that is sent to the 

IRS about financial activities” such as “income and taxes,” “investments, stock trades, gambling 

winnings and even the results of audits.”68 

39. ProPublica has published over 50 articles containing the confidential tax return 

information of the taxpayers targeted by its articles, accompanied by what members of Congress 

describe as “politicized, misleading and likely inaccurate rhetoric and analysis.”69 For example, 

67 Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen & Paul Kiel, The Secret IRS Files: Trove of NeverBefore-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax, PROPUBLICA, June 8, 2021,

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-revealhow-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax.

68 Id.

69 Letter from Congressman Kevin Bradley and Senator Mike Crapo to The Honorable 

Janet Yellen, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Treasury (April 18, 2022), https://gopwaysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/4-18-2022-Brady-Crapo-toYellen_FINAL.pdf.

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on April 13, 2022, ProPublica published confidential tax return information for Mr. Griffin’s 2013-

2018 federal income tax years, including Mr. Griffin’s purported average annual income, 

purported percent of income deducted, and purported average effective federal income tax rate for 

those periods.70 In July 2022, ProPublica again published Mr. Griffin’s (and others’) confidential 

tax return information to criticize Mr. Griffin’s opposition to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s 2020 

referendum to burden hard-working families in Illinois with yet more taxes.71

40. Although members of Congress have confirmed that there “is little doubt” that the 

confidential tax return information disclosed to ProPublica, including Mr. Griffin’s confidential 

tax return information, “does precisely what 26 U.S.C. § 6103 and related statutes were designed 

to prevent—the disclosure of private tax information and the political weaponization of that 

information,”72 it took more than two years before the United States finally brought a criminal 

charge regarding these unlawful disclosures. And even now, Defendants continue to stonewall

Mr. Griffin by refusing to provide him with information regarding the obvious connection between 

the unlawful inspections and disclosures of his confidential return information to ProPublica and 

the well-documented failures of the IRS to protect his and thousands of other United States 

taxpayers’ confidential return information. 

70 ProPublica, America’s Top 15 Earners and What They Reveal About the U.S. Tax System, 

PROPUBLICA, April 13, 2022, https://www.propublica.org/article/americas-top-15-earners-andwhat-they-reveal-about-the-us-tax-system. 

71 Paul Kiel & Mick Dumke, Ken Griffin Spent $54 Million Fighting a Tax Increase for 

the Rich. Secret IRS Data Shows It Paid Off for Him, PROPUBLICA, July 7, 2022, 

https://www.propublica.org/article/ken-griffin-illinois-graduated-income-tax.

72 Letter from Congressman Kevin Bradley and Senator Mike Crapo to The Honorable 

Janet Yellen, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Treasury, dated April 18, 2022. 

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COUNT I

Violations of 26 U.S.C. § 6103 – Willful or Grossly Negligent Unauthorized Disclosure

41. Mr. Griffin realleges and incorporates by reference each of the preceding 

paragraphs as if fully set forth herein. 

42. Title 26, U.S.C. § 6103 provides that tax “[r]eturns and return information shall be 

confidential” and prohibits disclosure and inspection by United States employees and other defined 

persons, except as specifically authorized in the provision. 

43. The Internal Revenue Manual § 10.5.5.1.6(2) defines “[e]mployee” as “all IRS 

personnel” including “all contractors who have staff-like access.” 

44. The Internal Revenue Manual § 10.5.5.1.6(3) defines “staff-like access” to mean 

“when a contracted individual is granted access to IRS facilities or IRS systems, or has opportunity 

to be exposed to IRS information.”

45. Title 26, U.S.C. § 6103(n) permits the disclosure of returns and return information 

to any person “to the extent necessary in connection with the processing, storage, transmission, 

and reproduction of such returns and return information, the programming, maintenance, repair, 

testing, and procurement of equipment, and the providing of other services, for purposes of tax 

administration.” 

46. Title 26, C.F.R. § 301.6103(n)-1(b)(2), however, prohibits such disclosures under 

26 U.S.C. § 6103(n) if the disclosure is not “necessary” or, in the alternative, if the services for 

which the disclosure is made pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 6103(n) can be “reasonably, properly, or 

economically performed by disclosure of only parts or portions of a return or if deletion of taxpayer 

identity information [...] reflected on a return would not seriously impair the ability of the 

employees to perform the service, then only the parts or portions of the return, or only the return 

with taxpayer identity information deleted, may be disclosed.”

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47. Title 26, U.S.C. § 7431 provides taxpayers a private right of action for damages 

against the United States for the knowing or negligent unauthorized inspection or disclosure of tax 

return information in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 6103. 

48. “Return” is defined as “any tax or information return, declaration of estimated tax, 

or claim for refund required by, or provided for or permitted under, the provisions of this title 

which is filed with the Secretary by, on behalf of, or with respect to any person, and any 

amendment or supplement thereto, including supporting schedules, attachments, or lists which are 

supplemental to, or part of, the return so filed.”

73

 

49. “Return information” includes “a taxpayer’s identity, the nature, source, or amount 

of his income, payments, receipts, deductions, exemptions, credits, assets, liabilities, net worth, 

tax liability, tax withheld, deficiencies, overassessments, or tax payments, whether the taxpayer’s 

return was, is being, or will be examined or subject to other investigation or processing, or any 

other data, received by, recorded by, prepared by, furnished to, or collected by the Secretary with 

respect to a return or with respect to the determination of the existence, or possible existence, of 

liability (or the amount thereof) of any person under this title for any tax, penalty, interest, fine, 

forfeiture, or other imposition, or offense.”74 

50. “[D]isclosure” means “the making known to any person in any manner whatever a 

return or return information.”75

51. As alleged herein, the IRS, in part through its employee, Mr. Littlejohn, repeatedly 

violated 26 U.S.C. § 6103 from as early as July 2020 through at least November 2020 by

73

 26 U.S.C. § 6103(b)(1). 

74

 26 U.S.C. § 6103(b)(2)(A).

75

 26 U.S.C. § 6103(b)(8). 

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unlawfully inspecting Mr. Griffin’s confidential tax return information for at least his federal 

income tax years 2013-2018, and then unlawfully disclosing that information to ProPublica. Those 

unlawful inspections and disclosures encompassed Mr. Griffin’s wage information, charitable 

contributions, financial and securities transactions, adjusted gross income, and information 

sufficient to calculate the purported effective federal income tax rates he paid for these years. 

52. The IRS made these unlawful disclosures knowingly, or at the very least negligently

or with gross negligence, including because the disclosures were made while willfully failing to 

establish appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to insure the security and 

confidentiality of Mr. Griffin’s confidential taxpayer information from the unlawful disclosures 

alleged herein. 

53. On information and belief, the IRS disclosed the confidential return information to 

ProPublica with the intent that ProPublica would widely publish the information through its 

website or through other means. 

54. The IRS’s disclosures of Mr. Griffin’s tax return information did not result from a 

“good faith, but erroneous interpretation of section 6103,”

76 but rather from knowing violations, 

gross negligence, and/or negligence.

55. The IRS’s disclosures of Mr. Griffin’s tax return information to ProPublica was not 

“requested by the taxpayer,” Mr. Griffin, pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 7431(b)(2). 

56. Separately, and in the alternative, as alleged herein, the IRS violated 26 U.S.C. 

§ 6103 by disclosing confidential tax return information, in whole or in part, to certain IRS 

personnel (including Mr. Littlejohn) regardless of whether they completed or remained up to date 

with the all of the required IRS-provided privacy and data security training. Indeed, even if the 

76

 26 U.S.C. § 7431(b)(1).

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disclosure of some of Mr. Griffin’s confidential return information was necessary to perform Mr. 

Littlejohn’s work for the IRS,77 the disclosures still violated 26 U.S.C. § 6103 because IRS 

personnel disclosed Mr. Griffin’s confidential tax return information to Mr. Littlejohn even though 

Mr. Littlejohn could have reasonably, properly, and economically performed his work for the IRS 

with only parts or portions of Mr. Griffin’s confidential return information or, in the alternative, 

Mr. Littlejohn’s work for the IRS would not have been seriously impaired if Mr. Griffin’s taxpayer 

identity information were deleted from his returns prior to their disclosures to Mr. Littlejohn.78

57. The IRS’s disclosure of Mr. Griffin’s tax return information therefore violated 26 

U.S.C. § 6103. 

58. Pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 7431, Mr. Griffin is entitled to statutory damages in the 

amount of $1,000 per each act of unauthorized disclosure. 

59. Mr. Griffin is also entitled to punitive damages pursuant to 26 U.S.C. 

§ 7431(c)(1)(B)(ii) because the IRS’s unlawful disclosure of his confidential tax return 

information was either willful or a result of gross negligence. 

60. Mr. Griffin is entitled to the costs of the action and reasonable attorney’s fees

pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 7431(c)(3) if he is the prevailing party in this action. 

77 For example, pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 6103(n). 

78 See 26 C.F.R. § 301.6103(n)-1(b)(2) (“Disclosure of returns or return information in 

connection with a written contract or agreement for the acquisition of property or services 

[pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 6103(n)] shall be made only to the extent necessary to reasonably, 

properly, or economically perform the contract. If it is determined that disclosure of return or return 

information is necessary, and if the services can be reasonably, properly, or economically 

performed by disclosure of only parts or portions of a return or if deletion of taxpayer identity 

information [...] reflected on a return would not seriously impair the ability of the employees to 

perform the service, then only the parts or portions of the return, or only the return with taxpayer 

identity information deleted, may be disclosed.”).

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COUNT II

Violation of 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(10) – The Privacy Act

61. Mr. Griffin realleges and incorporates by reference the preceding paragraphs as if 

fully set forth herein. 

62. The IRS is an agency within the meaning of the Privacy Act. 

63. The IRS maintained the records of Mr. Griffin, including his confidential tax return 

information, in a system of records as those terms are defined in the Privacy Act.

64. The IRS has long been aware of serious deficiencies in its safeguards, including as 

a result of repeated notice from TIGTA.

65. In violation of the Privacy Act, the IRS willfully and intentionally failed to establish 

appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to insure the security and 

confidentiality of records, including Mr. Griffin’s confidential tax return information, and failed

to protect against any anticipated threats or hazards to those records’security or integrity, including 

those that could result in substantial harm, embarrassment, inconvenience, or unfairness to any 

individual on whom information is maintained.

66. The IRS also violated FISMA and provisions of the Internal Revenue Manual, as 

alleged herein, by failing to establish appropriate administrative, technical, and physical 

safeguards over its system of records. 

67. As a direct and proximate result of its violations of the Privacy Act and FISMA, 

the IRS failed to take reasonable steps to prevent its personnel from unlawfully disclosing

Mr. Griffin’s records—his confidential tax return information—without his prior written consent 

and for no statutorily permitted purpose.

68. Mr. Griffin has and will continue to sustain damages directly traceable to the IRS’s

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violations set forth above. Mr. Griffin is therefore entitled to damages under 5 U.S.C. 

§§ 552a(g)(1)(D) and (g)(4).

JURY DEMAND

Pursuant to Rule 38(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Plaintiff demands a trial by 

jury of all claims asserted in this Complaint so triable.

PRAYER FOR RELIEF

WHEREFORE, Plaintiff Kenneth C. Griffin respectfully requests that the Court enter 

judgment in his favor and against Defendants as follows:

A. Declaring that the IRS willfully, knowingly, and/or by gross negligence, unlawfully 

disclosed Mr. Griffin’s confidential tax return information in violation of 26 U.S.C. 

§ 6103; 

B. Declaring that the IRS willfully, knowingly, and/or by gross negligence, unlawfully 

inspected Mr. Griffin’s confidential tax return information in violation of 26 U.S.C. 

§ 6103;

C. Awarding Mr. Griffin $1,000 in damages for each unauthorized disclosure of his 

tax return information, including subsequent disclosure pursuant to 26 U.S.C. 

§ 7431(c)(1);

D. Awarding Mr. Griffin reasonable costs and attorney’s fees pursuant to 26 U.S.C. 

§ 7431(c)(2)-(3) and as may otherwise be permitted by law; 

E. Ordering Defendants to produce to Mr. Griffin all documents in their possession, 

custody, or control regarding the inspection, transmittal, and/or disclosure of 

Mr. Griffin’s confidential tax return information to ProPublica;

F. Ordering the IRS to formulate, adopt, and implement a data security plan that 

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satisfies the requirements of the Privacy Act;

G. Awarding pre-and post-judgment interest as allowed by law; and

H. Any such other relief as the Court deems just and proper. 

Dated: October 27, 2023 Respectfully submitted,

 By: Jason D. Sternberg

 William A. Burck (pro hac vice)

 Derek L. Shaffer (pro hac vice)

 Alexander J. Merton (pro hac vice)

QUINN EMANUEL URQUHART & SULLIVAN LLP

1300 I Street, N.W., Suite 900

Washington, DC 20005

(202) 538-8334 

williamburck@quinnemanuel.com

derekshaffer@quinnemanuel.com

ajmerton@quinnemanuel.com

Christopher D. Kercher (pro hac vice)

Peter H. Fountain (pro hac vice)

QUINN EMANUEL URQUHART & SULLIVAN LLP

51 Madison Avenue, 22nd Floor,

New York, New York 10010

(212) 849-7000 

christopherkercher@quinnemanuel.com

peterfountain@quinnemanuel.com

John F. Bash (pro hac vice)

QUINN EMANUEL URQUHART & SULLIVAN LLP

300 West 6th St, Suite 2010

Austin, TX 78701

(737) 667-6100

johnbash@quinnemanuel.com

Jason D. Sternberg

QUINN EMANUEL URQUHART & SULLIVAN LLP

2601 South Bayshore Drive, Suite 1550

Miami, FL 33133

(786) 850-3607

jasonsternberg@quinnemanuel.com

Counsel to Plaintiff Kenneth C. Griffin

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CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I HEREBY CERTIFY that, on this 27th day of October, 2023, I caused a copy of the 

foregoing document to be filed with the Clerk of Court using the CM/ECF electronic filing 

system, which will send notification to all counsel of record.

By: Jason D. Sternberg

Jason D. Sternberg

Fla. Bar No. 72887

jasonsternberg@quinnemanuel.com

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