ATLANTA -- A federal grand jury has accused a former Internal Revenue Service employee of providing acquantainces with tax records that allegedly were used in an identity theft scheme.

Michael Sapp, 44, of Douglasville was charged with unauthorized access of a government computer, U.S. Attorney David E. Nahmias said Tuesday. The charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

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He is not in federal custody yet but was, instead, behind bars Wednesday at the DeKalb County Jail in connection with probation violation, a jail spokesperson said. The probation violation stemmed from a first-degree forgery charge, the official said.

Authorities said Sapp was taken into custody by DeKalb on Jan. 28.

The federal indictment claimed that in 1999 and 2000 Sapp, who worked in the IRS Adjustment Branch and Customer Service Division in Atlanta, provided dependent identity information to associates who used the information to prepare fraudulent tax returns.

The information allegedly came from the IRS' Integrated Data Retrieval System, a computer system that maintains a record of all individual and business tax returns.

Sapp stopped working for the IRS in May 2000 shortly after the investigation began.

Federal prosecutors said they plan to vigorously pursue the case.

"We're particularly concerned when any federal employee is the one whose stealing identity information because we consider it an important duty of the federal government to protect the identity information we have," Nahmias said. "When it's an IRS employee who has allegedly misused the identity information that is included in taxpayer returns ... we will vigorously prosecute those cases."

Channel 2 Action News reporters Jovita Moore and Tom Jones contributed to this report.