The IRS has settled with the billionaire founder of hedge fund Citadel for failing to protect his tax information from being leaked to the media, Accounting Today, CPA Practice Advisor, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and others reported.

The settlement with Citadel CEO Ken Griffith was reached as a result of a lawsuit he filed in December 2022, in which he claimed that the agency violated his right to privacy after investigative journalism outlet ProPublica reported on his tax records.

The records were leaked by an IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn, who also stole and leaked the tax returns of other billionaires, including former President Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison earlier this year, the maximum sentence allowed for the crime. The judge in the case called his actions the biggest heist in IRS history and “an intolerable attack on our constitutional democracy,” Bloomberg reported.

As a part of the settlement, the IRS issued a public apology to Griffin and the “thousands of other Americans whose personal information was leaked to the press." The statement also “assures Mr. Griffin and the other victims of Mr. Littlejohn’s actions that it has made substantial investments in its data security to strengthen its safeguarding of taxpayer information.”

“I am grateful to my team for securing an outcome that will better protect American taxpayers and that will ultimately benefit all Americans,” Griffin said in a statement reported by media outlets.