Date: June 18, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Portland, ME — A Buxton woman was sentenced on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Portland for two counts of wire fraud and one count of making and subscribing a false tax return. U.S. District Judge John A. Woodcock, Jr. sentenced Christine Bangs to a year plus a day in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Bangs was also ordered to pay $536,352.33 in restitution to her victim and $70,323 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for taxes on the income derived from the fraud that she failed to report. She was also ordered to forfeit any property, real or personal, which was derived from the proceeds of her crime, including $105,009.53 seized from a bank account in her name. According to court records, from March 2014 until June 2021, Bangs used her professional position as operations manager and access to her employer’s credit card, bank accounts and payroll for her own personal gain. Bangs used the corporate credit card to make approximately $197,936 in personal purchases, including $12,414.96 for tickets to a New England Patriots vs. Dallas Cowboys game, and stole an additional $255,645 from the victim by making approximately 213 wire transfers over the 7+ years. Of the money Bangs stole, she spent more than $176,000 on entertainment, tickets & dining. The U.S. Attorney’s Office does not identify victims of crime and is therefore not identifying Bangs’ former employer. Bangs omitted $183,386 in income when filing a personal tax return in 2020. The IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS CI) and FBI investigated the case. 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. 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.
