Task Force Halts ID Theft, Tax Fraud

The Miami Herald reports federal authorities charged 40 South Florida defendants with identity theft and income tax fraud in a major crackdown on the “epidemic” crime.  Prosecutors in Miami unveiled charges against a total of 40 defendants accused of stealing the personal information of roughly 54,000 people and using it to file fraudulent income-tax refund claims with the Internal Revenue Service.  
The takedown by a new South Florida task force — involving the IRS, FBI, Secret Service, U.S. Postal Inspection Service and local police departments — follows a Justice Department edict on October 1. It gave authorities at the local level greater leeway to pursue tax-fraud offenders who swipe other people’s identities to fleece the federal government.
Among major U.S. cities with the most fraud-related tax filings: Tampa (88,724 returns, with refunds of $468 million); Miami (74,496 returns, with refunds of $280 million) and Atlanta (29,787 returns, with refunds of $77 million).  At the news conference, authorities said the Miami area’s per capita number of false returns based on identity theft was 46 times the national average, and its per capita value of fraudulent refunds was 70 times the U.S. average.