IRS Supervisor In MD Pleads Guilty To Accepting $120K In Bribes

GAITHERSBURG, MD — An Internal Revenue Service supervisor from Montgomery County has pleaded guilty to accepting about $120,000 in bribes from a government subcontractor to gain and extend contracts with the agency.

Satbir Thukral, 62, of Germantown pleaded guilty Tuesday to accepting cash bribes in exchange for helping acquaintances and their businesses obtain and continue work on subcontracts with the IRS.

According to court documents, Thukral worked for the IRS as a computer engineer and supervised information technology contracts. In September 2018, an unnamed company began working on a subcontract for the IRS that Thukral supervised. Starting in October 2018, Thukral sought cash payments from the company's owner, called Individual 1 in public documents, prosecutors said. Between 2018 and 2020, Individual 1 made multiple cash payments to Thukral totaling more than $120,000.

In February 2021, when Individual 1 refused to pay Thukral any more money, he attempted to extort the business owner by threatening that Individual 1 would suffer economic consequences if the payments did not continue. In early February 2023, Individual 1 recorded an in-person meeting with Thukral as instructed by law enforcement.

At the meeting, the informant told Thukral the FBI had asked about bank withdrawals that he had made to pay Thukral, and Thukral instructed the informant to lie to the FBI about the nature of the cash withdrawals. Later that day, to prompt Individual 1 to lie to the FBI and help conceal the payments, Thukral returned a portion of the proceeds to the business owner, authorities said.

In a separate scheme, in July 2022, Thukral received about $2,800 in cash from a manager at a prime contractor with the IRS. The manager made the payment, in part, in return for Thukral’s help with the continued employment of two underqualified individuals at two other IRS subcontractors.

The manager believed that Thukral, who had been selected to serve on a three-person panel that would have evaluated the technical feasibility of bids of an upcoming IRS contract valued at about $200 million, could influence the valuations to the manager’s benefit.

Thukral pleaded guilty to acceptance of bribes by a public official. He faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison when sentenced.