As we recently noted, the Internal Revenue Service has been handing out money to people not entitled to receive any of it. Long Island resident Carol Cooke, for example, received tax refunds for thousands of dollars, all to people who did not live at her residence. This was obvious fraud but when Cooke contacted the IRS they gave her the runaround. This was not an isolated case. A full 23,994 tax refunds were sent to a single address in Atlanta, including 8,393 refunds deposited to a single bank. Top destinations for fake refunds include Miami, Chicago, Detroit and Houston. But it doesn’t stop there. The fraud is diverse and multicultural. Last year the IRS sent some $3.6 billion in fraudulent tax refunds to people using stolen identities, down from $5.2 billion in 2011. According to one report the IRS sent 655 tax refunds to a single address in Lithuania, and 343 refunds went to one address in Shanghai, in the People’s Republic of China. All told, the IRS issued 1.1 million refunds based on stolen Social Security Numbers, and paid out $385 million in 141,000 refunds based on stolen taxpayer identification numbers. As the president might have put it, if you like your fraudulent refund you can keep it, period.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 21:15:24 +0000
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