It is a scam as brazen as it was familiar to the Internal Revenue Service.

Federal authorities charged a New York City police officer with filing more than a dozen fraudulent tax returns for himself and others, including many in which children were falsely claimed as dependents, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday in Manhattan.

The officer, Jonathan Wally, 33, kept a list of names and Social Security numbers of at least 52 children born in 2007, the complaint said. The list was stored in a Bronx office where he had been improperly moonlighting as a tax preparer without authorization from the Police Department, the authorities said.

As a result of false returns filed by Officer Wally from 2010 to 2012, the complaint said, the I.R.S. paid refunds of about $120,000.

Since 2008, when Officer Wally received a tax preparer number from the I.R.S., he had used 9 of the names on 13 people’s tax returns, the complaint said. All of the children have Puerto Rican Social Security numbers.