IRS imposter enjoys free hotel stay

A woman who posed as an IRS agent and failed to pay her hotel bill has avoided jail but was sentenced to pay $55,000 to the owners of the Inn Marin Hotel in Novato, Calif., according to local newspaper accounts.
 

The woman, identified as Sherry Lynn Vertoch, pleaded guilty to impersonating a federal officer, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The judge followed the prosectors’ recommendation to place her on supervised probation for five years instead of sending her to prison. The woman is ill with diabetes, high blood pressure and other ailments, the story says.
The woman often stayed in at the hotel for various time periods from 2002 to 2008, sometimes paying in cash, before she started her two-year-long free spree.
 

She repeatedly stalled payment by telling hotel staff that she was an IRS agent working on an expanded investigation. The room she stayed in – room 121 – had a rate of $79 a night.
Ultimately, hotel co-owner Robert Marshall contacted the IRS to find out if she was an employee — and that quickly led to her arrest.
 

By David Wilkening