IRS: 1.2M Cases of Identity Theft by Illegal Immigrants Found

IRS: 1.2M Cases of Identity Theft by Illegal Immigrants Found
Theodore Bunker
16 Mar 2018

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/irs-illegal-immigrants-identity-theft-fraud/2018/03/16/id/849101/

The Internal Revenue Services documented over 1.2 million cases of illegal immigrants filing tax returns with illegitimate social security numbers in 2017, CNSNews.com reports.

"We identified 1,227,579 electronically filed tax returns, processed in FY 2017 through April 18, 2017, in which the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number on the return does not match the Social Security Number on the Form W-2," the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration told CNSNews.com.

"Note that a Social Security Number may have been used on Form W-2 for more than one of these returns."

Between processing years 2011 and 2016, "the IRS placed the employment identity theft marker on 1,346,485 taxpayer accounts," according to a TIGTA report from last month.

When asked by CNSNews.com how many of these cases "did the IRS refer to federal law enforcement for criminal investigation and prosecution? How many did they not refer to law enforcement and why not?"

TIGTA responded: "We do not have this information."

"Over the last few years, IRS-Criminal Investigation prioritized its limited resources pursuing identity thieves who stole millions of identities from innocent taxpayers and applied for, and received, tax refunds based on those identities," TIGTA added in response to a question about successful prosecutions of employment identity theft.

"Additionally, based on how IRS-CI captures case-related information and how prosecutions are based (the federal violation utilized), it is not possible to ascertain the exact information for the question regarding how many cases the IRS pursued criminally where [Individual Tax Identification Numbers] holders utilized another individuals' [Social Security Number].

"To put it another way, in investigating the type of criminal activity that you inquired, IRS-CI, in addition to its traditional criminal tax statutes, would also likely utilize other statutes… which carry a more significant impact than the law cited in the 2004 TIGTA report regarding the fraudulent misuse of a social security number."

I found out last month that someone filed with mine. It was fishy enough that they mailed a letter to me asking if I had filed. I had not. So I spent the next hour and a half on the phone and on hold with IRS.

Now I have to send a copy of my SS card in with my return and I cannot file electronically.
What a PIA. But, I am glad the IRS caught it before they processed the fake return.

Doc said:

I found out last month that someone filed with mine. It was fishy enough that they mailed a letter to me asking if I had filed. I had not. So I spent the next hour and a half on the phone and on hold with IRS.

Now I have to send a copy of my SS card in with my return and I cannot file electronically.
What a PIA. But, I am glad the IRS caught it before they processed the fake return.

Click to expand...

Happened to my SIL two years ago except the IRS had processed the false return and wouldn’t process hers. Took a while to straighten out.

The irs is another governmental department that needs a huge purge to get rid of the old guard in the top positions who have a agenda that far surpasses what they were hired to do.