ID theft program expanded

Posted: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 12:00 am

The Internal Revenue Service has expanded a nationwide program designed to help law enforcement agencies obtain tax return data vital to their local efforts in investigating and prosecuting specific cases of identity theft.
More than 1,560 waiver requests have been received since the Law Enforcement Assistance Program’s inception from more than 100 state and local law enforcement agencies in the nine states participating in the pilot.
The expansion covers all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia and went into effect March 29.
“The results of the pilot illustrate that this works as an innovative tool for law enforcement to help pursue tough identity theft situations,” acting commissioner Steven T. Miller said. “This program is an effective way for law enforcement to work with the IRS to pursue identity thieves and protect taxpayers. Expanding the program and making it permanent on a nationwide basis makes sense for victims as well as law enforcement and tax administration.”
The IRS also announced continued progress on several areas involving identity theft, including resolution of more victim cases and continued emphasis on criminal investigations.
Since the start of 2013, the IRS has worked with victims to resolve and close more than 200,000 cases. This is in addition to the expanded Identity Protection PIN (IP PIN) pilot, an initiative to protect victims with previously confirmed cases of identity theft by creating an additional layer of security on these accounts.
The IRS issued more than 770,000 IP PINs to identity theft victims at the start of this tax filing season.
Since October, there have been more than 670 criminal identity theft investigations opened.
The criminals being sentenced are spending an average of four years in custody with sentences as long as 20 years.
This past January, the IRS also conducted a coordinated and highly successful identity theft enforcement sweep. The coast-to-coast effort against identity theft suspects led to 734 enforcement actions in January.
The effort comes on top of a growing identity theft effort that led to 2,400 other enforcement actions against identity thieves during fiscal year 2012.

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