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Fighting ‘Alarming’ Growth of ID Scam, IRS Doubles Its Investigations of Tax Refunds
By Colby Adams
printThe Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigations division is shifting resources to better investigate the "alarming" growth of stolen tax refunds, according to a senior IRS official. Using Web sites that falsely claim to offer IRS-approved online tax return preparation services, as well as other means, criminals are gleaning identity and payroll data from unsuspecting taxpayers. The information-at times, gathered through accomplices at nursing homes, schools or the military-is used to fraudulently claim refunds, according to Richard Weber, chief of the IRS division. "Often the thieves enlist bank employees to look the other way when cashing multiple Treasury checks with different...
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An IRS initiative granting state and municipal investigators access to a federal database of bank regulatory filings has helped law enforcement agencies reap hundreds of millions of dollars in forfeitures.
U.S. lawmakers proposed legislation Wednesday to combat the pilfering of tax refunds, now the most common type of identity theft-related fraud in the country.
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service's criminal division will open more investigations into members of an anti-government group that refuse to pay income tax, according to a senior agency official.
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The number of suspicious activity reports filed on potential identity theft increased over 120 percent between 2004 and 2009, the head of the U.S. Treasury Department's financial intelligence unit said Monday.
Reports of check fraud tied to identity theft rose in 2009 even as instances of related loan and credit fraud fell, according to a study released Friday by the Identity Theft Resource Center.
As many as 85 percent of banks have implemented adequate compliance systems aimed at rooting out identity thieves and limiting the number of data breaches, according to analysts.
The Federal Trade Commission Wednesday again pushed back the enforcement deadline of a controversial rule requiring financial institutions and "creditors" to take steps to prevent identity theft-related data breaches.
Terrorist financing typologies that many in the banking compliance industry have struggled to find do exist, but they are initially difficult to identify, according to Grahame White, a detective constable for the National Terrorist Financial Investigation Unit in the United Kingdom.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has given financial institutions an additional six months to develop programs to prevent identity theft due to confusion in the industry over the scope of the agency's rules.
Congress is considering a request that would allow the Federal Trade Commission to levy fines against companies with poor controls over sensitive customer data, according to a report released Tuesday.
Financial regulatory examiners will be checking that banks are not overly relying on their existing monitoring systems to comply with new federal rules meant to curb identity theft, say consultants.
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Final federal banking regulations for monitoring identity theft moved forward on Monday as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., one of six federal banking agencies considering the measures, approved them.
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