Steamed state tax honchos vengefully audited their own employees to purge the agency’s sting operation division after their boss blew the whistle on Tax Department brass, a blockbuster new lawsuit charges.
Five state Tax Department workers filed suit in Brooklyn federal court Monday, claiming they were targeted for tax audits and then found to owe money – an effort intended to create a pretext for firing them, the suit claims.
The plaintiffs all worked under former Department of Taxation and Finance director of enforcement Thomas Stanton, who was fired in 2010 after telling The Post that his cigarette tax sting operations were being undermined by department brass.
Stanton and his immediate underling, Paul Rossi, were both canned the day after he was quoted in the July 8, 2010 article.
State tax officials later claimed that Stanton — a veteran tax enforcement officer — didn’t apply proper controls to his sting operations and that he couldn’t account for money shortfalls and other irregularities.
Stanton countered that his staffers were highly effective in battling the cigarette bootleggers and that the discrepancies stemmed from getting shorted by the crooks they were doing business with.
Stanton and Rossi didn’t were not protected by civil service law — but their staffers couldn’t get the boot so easily, the suit states.
But Stanton’s staffers were suddenly smacked with audit notices after their bosses got fired – and were all found to have filed deficient returns, according to the complaint.
“The notice of the deficiency was a pretext designed to privde a lawful basis for the retaliatory termination” of the employees, the suit states.
But the employees, Thomas Fedele, Matthew Anderson, Gregory Aurigemma, Arturo Ramirez-Calle and Alec Zef, have all challenged the agency on their findings.
Their federal lawsuit alleges that the audits were flagrant retaliations against their affiliation with Stanton and Rossi and that their civil rights were violated.
“There are many forms of corruption,” he told The Post Monday. “What they are doing to these guys is unconstitutional.”
State tax department officials did not immediately return a call for comment on the suit.