Rodney Quinn Rupe, a 47-year-old former employee of the Internal Revenue Service from Syracuse, Utah, has been sentenced to 12 months and one day in federal prison for wire fraud. The sentencing was handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Howard C. Nielson following Rupe’s guilty plea on June 11, 2025.
Rupe was also ordered to serve two years of supervised release after completing his prison term.
Court documents reveal that on April 15, 2022, while working at the IRS, Rupe accessed agency systems and transferred $2,021,986 in tax credits from ExxonMobil’s taxpayer account to an account belonging to Ex XO Exteriors Ltd., a company he had created and controlled. He carried out the transfers through three separate transactions using interstate wires. On September 18, 2023, Rupe moved the credits so they would be applied to his company’s 2019 tax year account with the intention of obtaining a refund check for Ex XO Exteriors Ltd.
Rupe resigned from the IRS on October 31, 2023. In 2024, he made several unsuccessful attempts to deposit the refund check before being arrested.
U.S. Attorney Melissa Holyoak of the District of Utah commented on the case: “As a former IRS employee, Mr. Rupe accessed an IRS database as a trusted government employee to fraudulently obtain millions of dollars for his own personal use. This administration is committed to ferreting out programmatic government fraud, particularly by those who abused their positions rather than protecting the Americans they swore to serve.”
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration conducted the investigation into Rupe’s actions. Assistant United States Attorney Carl D. LeSueur prosecuted the case.
