IRS Chief Frank Bisignano Denies Wall Street Journal Report He Spied on JPMorgan Colleagues' Emails

Frank Bisignano runs the IRS. He also runs the Social Security Administration. Both agencies sit on top of financial and personal data for nearly every American. A Wall Street Journal report alleges he spied on his own colleagues more than a decade ago, when he was co-chief operating officer at JPMorgan Chase.

The Journal's report, citing people who worked with Bisignano, claims he directed his security team to crack open the email inboxes of executives he viewed as competition. One target was Charlie Scharf, then head of JPMorgan's consumer banking division and now CEO of Wells Fargo. The alleged motive, per the Journal: keep employees in line and undermine internal rivals as Bisignano climbed the ladder.

One unnamed executive told the Journal he suspected he was being watched, so he planted a made-up code phrase in an email. He says Bisignano later repeated that phrase back to him, which the executive took as confirmation. The Journal also reported that Bisignano had staff track colleagues' keystrokes and personally obtained a confidential Federal Energy Regulatory Commission complaint tied to a disputed derivatives trade.

None of the allegations involve customer data. The claims are limited to internal corporate communications and workplace surveillance of fellow executives.

Bisignano isn't taking it quietly. "None of it's true, ever in my whole career," he told CNBC on Tuesday, calling the Journal's reporting "really bad journalism for political reasons," according to The Independent. He said he spoke with Scharf by phone the night before the interview aired. "We had a good laugh about it," Bisignano said.

His attorney, Courtney Forrest, denied every specific claim in on-record statements to the Journal. Forrest said Bisignano "never directed anyone to look through any employee's or executive's communications or engaged in any form of surveillance," and called the code-phrase story false. Forrest also denied the existence of any dossier on employees, which the Journal reported Bisignano kept in a drawer in case colleagues "went native" — meaning showed disloyalty.

The Journal also reported that Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's CEO, soured on Bisignano in late 2012 and told him to find work elsewhere. Forrest disputes that account too, saying Bisignano left on his own terms in 2013 for payments company First Data. Dimon issued a public statement praising Bisignano at the time of his 2013 departure, and a JPMorgan spokesperson this week said the bank "applauds his service to our country," sidestepping the spying claims entirely rather than backing the Journal's account.

The Journal is citing people who worked with Bisignano, not documents, court filings, or a named on-the-record accuser for most of the specific claims. Forrest has denied each allegation specifically and by name, not with a vague non-denial. Scharf, the alleged victim, is by Bisignano's account not treating this as adversarial. We have anonymous sourcing on one side and specific, attributed denials on the other, with the one named potential victim publicly unbothered.

But forensic teams reportedly found evidence after Bisignano's departure that his staff had accessed sensitive records and internal messages, and his successor, Matt Zames, tightened access controls to require legal sign-off before anyone could open employee emails, according to the Journal's reporting relayed by The Daily Beast. Whatever happened, JPMorgan apparently changed its internal controls right after he left. This deserves scrutiny independent of who's telling the truth about the code phrase.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who appointed Bisignano to the newly created IRS CEO post in October, isn't wavering. He praised Bisignano's "proven executive leadership, operational excellence, and a results-driven mindset," telling CNBC he's done "a terrific job delivering better service to taxpayers, eliminating waste, modernizing operations." Bessent last week handed Bisignano oversight of the Trump Accounts savings program created under last year's tax law, according to CNBC.

Bisignano is named in a class-action shareholder lawsuit in the Southern District of New York alleging Fiserv misinformed investors about growth figures while Bisignano ran the company, and that he personally benefited from an inflated share price. His attorney declined to comment on that active litigation to the Journal, though noted much of the stock decline happened after Bisignano left and Mike Lyons took over. A federal judge last week criticized a settlement Bisignano signed as IRS commissioner that gives President Trump immunity from certain tax audits, according to CNBC.

No criminal charges, civil suit, or regulatory action has been filed over the JPMorgan surveillance allegations. This is a media investigation built on anonymous sources against on-record denials, not an adjudicated finding. Whether it goes further likely depends on whether the Journal, or anyone else, can produce documents or named witnesses beyond what's already been published. Bisignano's word and his lawyer's flat denials are against the Journal's unnamed sources, and the man he allegedly targeted appears to have moved on.