IRS Agent Seduced Me, Then Didn't Help Me With Audit, Oregon Man Claims
"I felt like a cheap whore," said Vincent Burroughs.
April 12, 2013 -- "I felt like a cheap whore," says Vincent Burroughs.
In August 2011, at 9 p.m. on a warm night in Eugene, Ore., Burroughs said he opened his front door to Dora Abrahamson. She was an IRS agent. She was auditing him. The two had never met.
"She said she was going to do my paperwork," Burroughs said in an interview with ABC News. "She came up the stairs, knocked on the door. I opened the door."
They went into his bedroom and had sex, Burroughs said.
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Asked how he would characterize the sexual encounter, Burroughs said, "it was forced upon me."
The encounter later got a lot of people talking--and laughing. Glenn Beck addressed it on his TV show. Jay Leno made the obligatory joke about getting "screwed by the IRS."
But Burroughs didn't find it funny.
"I am a stress case. I just feel like I am going to cry right now, but I am trying not to," he said.
Years ago, Burroughs said, he was making good money as a contractor. When the economy hit the skids, his business dried up, quashing his hopes of becoming a full-time motorcycle racer.
He got behind on his taxes -- by about $20,000, he figured. When the call came from the IRS a couple of years later, it was Abrahamson on the line, he said.
"And she goes, 'Oh, wait a minute. I think I know you,'" Burroughs said. "I go, O.K., how do you know me? And she goes, 'Do you race motorcycles?'"
Burroughs said Abrahamson texted him a picture of herself, but he didn't recognize her.
When Abrahamson told him he was being audited, Burroughs said, it hit him hard.
"I started shaking immediately. My heart rate went up. I just tried to cooperate with them as much as I could," he said.
The good news, he said, was that Abrahamson seemed most eager to help out.
"She was sending me texts. Some of them made me feel like, I am lucky that she has got my audit, 'cause she is gonna help me. Then, some of them made me feel like, I think this girl wants something else."
Burroughs' attorney, David Moule, showed "20/20" some of the texts allegedly sent by Abrahamson.
"[I] need a hug bad. do you have one?" one message read.
There were more: "i will be there if you text me your address." "[O]h boy, i got a small surprise." "[Y]ou want a massage? i can put you to sleep."
What about Burroughs' texts to her?
Burroughs said they were in his cell phone, in Moule's office.
"There were very few texts from him," Moule said. "And whatever there were from him, had been erased."
Burroughs admitted he did reply.
"When she was texting me all this sexual stuff, I did not want to act like I wasn't interested, as far as her auditing me," he said.
Asked if he ever told Abrahamson to stop the suggestive messages, Burroughs said he didn't.
Did he think, "I have a friend at the IRS"?
"Yep," Burroughs said.
A week or so after the audit began, Burroughs said, he hadn't gathered the papers he needed. He said Abrahamson asked about stopping by to give him a hand. He agreed.
That's when the encounter above allegedly occurred. Burroughs described in greater detail what happened.
"She just pushed me back, and I kind of went back, and I landed like that, and she immediately came over, got on top of me, started kissing on me. ... [T]hen she leaned up and started tearing my shirt off."
They went to the bedroom, Burroughs went on.
IRS Agent Denies Sexually Coercing Man She Audited
"She, I, she put her foot up here like this, spun, flopped down on the bed, and pulled me on top of her, and she was kissing me, and then she rolled over on top of me. We finished removing my clothes, removed her clothes, and things happened."
Dora Abrahamson declined an interview request from ABC News.
A few days after the sexual encounter, Burroughs said, Abrahamson called and said she was stepping down from his audit due to a conflict of interest. His new IRS agent said he owed around $69,000.
Burroughs was not happy. "Somebody has to be accountable for what the IRS does, because they are unaccountable. They run with no leash on," he said.
"Sexual coercion and abuse of power -- there's nothing funny about it, you know?" he added.
"I am suing Dora Abrahamson and the United States of America for sexual coercion and the violation of privacy act," Burroughs said.
In court papers, Abrahamson denied Burroughs' allegations.
"She told me that this case has been hurtful to her," said Moule, who spoke to her briefly. "That the media attention-- she felt that her name was being smeared. ... In some ways, she was sympathetic. She was crying."
In fact, he's considering dropping Abrahamson from the suit, Moule said. So if Burroughs wins, taxpayers would foot the bill.
Asked how taxpayers should feel about this suit, Moule said: "I imagine the taxpayers aren't going to be happy about paying any settlement, if they had a say."
Moule added, "Justice would be served if the government wrote out a check for $100,000."
As for Burroughs, what would he say to those who question why he wants the government to pay him for getting unsolicited sex?
"I guess they'd have to be in my shoes."
Watch the full story on "20/20: Moochers?" TONIGHT at 10 ET.