Ex-D.C. Juvenile Justice Employee Sold Identities of Youth Offenders

Marc Bell, 49, of Bowie, Md., worked from 2005 to 2013 at the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, where he became a key source for a $42 million ID-theft ring.

Bell pled guilty on Jan. 5 to helping steal at least $2 million in federal income tax refunds by cribbing personal information on 645 youth offenders.

Kevin Brown, 45, of Capitol Heights, Md., and owner of Classic Kutz, previously confessed to helping an alleged network of more than 130 participants file fraudulent returns to claim refunds of more than $42 million.

Bell admitted stealing personal information from young people under court supervision and giving it to Brown’s network.

“Mr. Bell was a public servant who was trusted to serve the taxpayers of the District of Columbia,” said Thomas Jankowski, special agent in charge of the IRS’s Washington field office. “Aside from the terrible harm done to the government… Mr. Bell has caused immeasurable harm to the financial well-being of the youth whose identities he stole.”

In 2001, The Washington Post profiled Bell, then 34 and the director of a District-funded program by the nonprofit Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice to keep youths out of jail.

The Post reported at the time that Bell grew up in Southeast DC, overcame a drug charge as a juvenile and earned degrees from Morgan State University and the University of Maryland. His mentoring program pulled more than 700 youths facing criminal charges­ out of detention and kept 85 percent of them from violating the terms of their release, according to the Post.