A former top Internal Revenue Service lawyer and three other Ernst & Young partners reduced taxes for Americans making $10 million or more with a fraud that even used the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to disguise their lies, according to an indictment charging the men.

The four current and former partners of the giant accounting firm were arrested Wednesday and charged with fraud and other crimes relating to tax shelters that were devised beginning in early 1998, the indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan said.