Tax fraud fugitive nabbed after posting selfies A US man charged with tax fraud and identity theft has been arrested after fleeing authorities and allegedly posting bragging selfies on Twitter. Lance Ealy, 28, of Ohio was arrested in a raid Wednesday in Atlanta by federal authorities after he skipped trial on charges he purchased stolen Social Security numbers and personal …
Its almost like we don't need old, low res CCTV any more, almost weekly some super brain criminal takes a photo of themselves taunting the police, bragging of their exploits or laying out their future endeavours, even using a low tech iPhone camera produces better results than CCTV.
The IP Address ranges that are used by those in the prison system are a known and static group.
It would be very easy to monitor and flag any online tax returns filed by someone using a computer on one of those networks as one that may require further review.
This is where the government should easily use big data to route out fraud.
There are other things that could be done which would also limit fraud, only they lack the brain power to think outside the box...
The IRS should let people optionally add a PIN to their records that must be included on any return that is submitted to prevent this. So long as they make setting the PIN on your record secure, maybe you have to go to the post office in the same ZIP code as your tax home and show your ID and submit the info to them or something.
I know about the e-file PIN, but as you say the problem is that it isn't persistent. It isn't foolproof, since your accountant could be hacked, but the main source of the data used for this scam is getting a list of names and SSNs. Sadly that's all you need to file under someone else's name.
I don't know the details of how the scam works exactly, but I would think if they filed under my name they wouldn't know how much income and withholding was on my W2. I guess the crooks are relying on the IRS helpfully 'correcting' a flawed return that doesn't include accurate info, but they need to start setting those aside for extra checking for fraud - or just plain kick them back and make the person refile.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
