How a Retirement Withdrawal Can Lead to a Perjury Conviction

Sometimes, it’s illegal to spend money that you set aside for yourself.

When you save money in many types of workplace retirement accounts, the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t collect income taxes on that money until it’s time to take it out, when you’re older.

Need money before then? Certain types of “hardship” withdrawals are permissible. But you must have a very good reason, and you definitely can’t lie about it.

Last week, a sentencing hearing took place after a rare case involving this sort of legal violation. Federal prosecutors had won convictions against Marilyn Mosby, the former Baltimore prosecutor who may be best known for pursuing charges against the police officers in connection with the death of Freddie Gray in 2015, for both impermissible withdrawals and making a false mortgage application when she bought a condo in Florida.

Ms. Mosby will spend up to 12 months in home confinement, absent a successful appeal or a presidential pardon, which she has requested.

Her case is a complicated one, given that the sentence isn’t just for impermissible withdrawals. And her false claim of financial hardship to withdraw money from her city retirement account took place during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when alternative, one-time-only rules were in effect.

Still, hardship withdrawals are widely available.

What follows are some questions and answers about what happened in Ms. Mosby’s case and what the rules actually are. Keep in mind that employers have a fair bit of discretion in how they set up the rules for their retirement plans, and there may be slight differences between the rules for 401(k)s, 403(b)s and 457 plans.