Internal Revenue Service agents stormed the Fredericksburg, Va., home of former State Department contractor Kathleen McGrade on Thursday, The Daily Caller has learned.
It was the second raid of the scandal-embroiled former State Department worker’s home in the past few weeks. On Sept. 15 officials from the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General also raided the Fredericksburg home.
With the help of local sheriff’s deputies, IRS agents entered the house at about 2:45 p.m, neighbors tell TheDC. “The alarm is blaring,” one neighbor told TheDC, adding that the authorities “have a large truck in the street with large-sized men apparently getting ready to haul off seized property.”
The federal agents were wearing vests reading “FEDERAL POLICE” and “IRS-CIG.”
At 4:00 p.m., neighbors told TheDC that between six and ten IRS agents were still at the home, and a “car hauler just pulled up” to tow away a car from the garage. The car is a burgundy Lexus LS460.
Sources told TheDC that the agents have moving trucks and are seizing everything inside the home, including vehicles.
One neighbor said truck drivers were told to pack up everything in the house and take it to New York.
McGrade was a contractor working for the State Department’s office of Overseas Building Operations. She handled disbursement of millions of dollars in taxpayer money, and facilitated the award of more than $52 million in contracts to her husband Brian Collinsworth’s company, the Sterling Royale Group.
Collinsworth previously denied during a phone call with TheDC that he was married to McGrade. Jennifer Herring, McGrade’s daughter, was a principal with Sterling Royale as well.
State Department officials fired McGrade within hours of when The Daily Caller first published its exclusive July investigation about the contracting abuse.
McGrade, Herring and Collinsworth were likely able to pull off the alleged scheme over the course of at least two years because they had different last names.
According to sources in the area, McGrade and Collinsworth appeared in federal court in Alexandria, Va., on Thursday morning. This latest raid, and subsequent property seizure, suggests that an indictment may have been handed down against the two at their court appearance.
Adding to that theory, a neighbor told TheDC that FBI and IRS agents “were staked out all over the area, on all streets, all day” before they raided the home.
Another neighbor said that, because the alarm was still going off at the home hours after the raid, it’s unlikely that either McGrade or Collinsworth were at the house.
Neighbors who spoke to TheDC did not spot the couple on Thursday. One neighbor said McGrade and Collinsworth were home on Wednesday.
Court officials, law enforcement officials and State Department officials declined to comment on these latest developments.
The home has a pool in the backyard and a fountain in the front yard. Neighbors told TheDC that a fence, which lines the entire rear of the property, including the woods behind the house, is adorned with gold-plated accents.