Date: Oct. 21, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov OKLAHOMA CITY — Kevin Lane Bierig of Oklahoma City, has been sentenced to serve 36 months in federal prison, the statutory maximum, for corruptly endeavoring to obstruct or impede the due administration of the federal tax laws, announced U.S. Attorney Robert J. Troester. On April 4, 2024, a federal grand jury returned a four-count Indictment against Bierig, charging him with one count of corruptly endeavoring to obstruct or impede the due administration of the federal tax laws and three counts of failing to file a tax return. According to the Indictment, Bierig, a career drilling consultant in the energy industry, has not filed a tax return since at least 2005, despite being required to do so based on his level of income. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) initiated enforcement action in 2013, which included the collection of levied funds from Bierig’s paychecks. Court documents allege that beginning in 2017, while knowing of the IRS enforcement actions, Bierig forged the signature of an IRS revenue officer onto IRS forms, including an IRS Installment Agreement and an IRS Release of Levy, in an attempt to have levied funds paid to himself rather than be sent to the IRS. On June 13, 2024, Bierig pleaded guilty to Count 1 of the Indictment. As part of his plea, Bierig admitted that he has earned substantial income since 2004, yet has not filed a federal tax return since that year. He further admitted that he knew the IRS had been investigating him since at least 2017, that the IRS was attempting to collect the delinquent taxes, and that he forged official IRS forms and sent the fraudulent forms to his billing company in an effort to have the frozen funds sent to himself instead of the IRS. At the sentencing hearing on October 17, 2024, U.S. District Judge Bernard M. Jones sentenced Bierig to serve 36 months in federal prison, followed by one year of supervised release. The court also ordered Bierig to pay $951,643.62 in restitution to the IRS. In announcing the sentence, the Court noted the escalation of Bierig’s criminal conduct over several years from not filing and paying his taxes, to willfully impeding the IRS’s efforts to collect taxes. This case is the result of an investigation by IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Brown prosecuted the case. IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
