Tag Archives: IRS

U.S. charges 61 over India-based IRS impersonation scam

A policeman escorts men who they said were arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of tricking American citizens into sending them money by posing as U.S. tax officials, at a court in Thane, on the outskirts of Mumbai, India

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department charged 61 people and entities on Thursday with taking part in a scam involving India-based call centers where agents impersonated Internal Revenue Service, immigration and other federal officials and demanded payments for non-existent debts.

The scam, which had operated since 2013, targeted at least 15,000 people who lost more than $300 million, the department said in a statement.

The defendants, who were indicted by a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas on Oct. 19, included 32 people and five call centers in India and 24 people in nine U.S. states, the statement said.

The indictment said the operators of the call centers in Ahmedabad, in the Indian state of Gujarat, “threatened potential victims with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation if they did not pay taxes or penalties to the government.”

Payments by victims were laundered by a U.S. network of co-conspirators using prepaid debit cards or wire transfers, often using stolen or fake identities, the statement said.

The call centers also ran scams in which victims were offered short-term loans or grants on condition of providing good-faith deposits or payment of a processing fee, it said.

The investigation involved Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Treasury, Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service and police officials, the Justice Department said.

(Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Frances Kerry)

India arrests 70 call-center workers accused of duping U.S. citizens

Police escort men who they said were arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of tricking American citizens into sending them money by posing as U.S. tax officials, at a court in Thane, on the outskirts of Mumbai, India,

By Devidutta Tripathy

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Police in India said they arrested 70 call-centre workers on Wednesday on suspicion of tricking American citizens into sending them money by posing as U.S. tax officials.

A total of 772 workers were detained earlier on Wednesday in raids on nine call centers in a Mumbai suburb, a senior police official told Reuters. Seventy were placed under formal arrest, 630 were released pending questioning over the coming days, and 72 were freed without further investigation.

“The motive was earning money,” said Parag Manere, a deputy commissioner of police. “They were running an illegal process, posing themselves as officers of the (U.S.) Internal Revenue Service.”

The police official did not identify the company where the call center workers were employed, or any of the main players involved in the alleged scam. He also declined comment on whether Mumbai police were investigating in conjunction with U.S. authorities, or comment on what prompted the inquiry.

Manere said the alleged scammers asked Americans to buy prepaid cash cards in order to settle outstanding tax debts and also used the threat of arrest against people who did not pay up.

Last year, a Pennsylvania man who helped coordinate a fraud in which India-based callers preyed on vulnerable Americans by pretending to be U.S. government agents was sentenced to 14-1/2 years in prison.

India is home to a vast number of back office operations for North American and European companies. Thousands of call centers in India provide back office services to these firms, processing everything from utility payments to credit card bills.

While such business arrangements help Western companies cut costs, there have been frequent allegations of security breaches and improper trading of consumers’ account details and other commercial information for profit.

(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Euan Rocha and Mark Heinrich)

IRS notifying more taxpayers about potential data breach

Hackers may have accessed the tax transcripts of approximately 724,000 United States taxpayers by using stolen personal information, the Internal Revenue Service announced Friday.

The agency also said hackers targeted another 576,000 accounts, but could not access them.

The announcement followed a nine-month investigation into its “Get Transcript” application.

The tool was launched in January 2014 and gave taxpayers a way to download or order several years of their transcripts through the IRS website.

However, the agency announced last May that “criminals” had been able to access other tax histories that were not their own by using personal information that had been stolen elsewhere.

The IRS originally announced that about 114,000 transcripts may have been improperly accessed, while hackers targeted another 111,000 but were unsuccessful in their attempts.

The tool has been offline ever since while officials searched for other suspicious activity.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has handled the investigations.

In August, the IRS announced TIGTA found about another 220,000 cases of potential breaches since “Get Transcript” debuted, and about 170,000 more unsuccessful suspicious attempts.

On Friday, the IRS announced TIGTA’s latest review found about 390,000 potential additional cases of improper access, and some 295,000 cases where tax data was targeted but not obtained.

The IRS noted that some of the attempts might not have been malicious.

“It is possible that some of those identified may be family members, tax return preparers or financial institutions using a single email address to attempt to access more than one account,” it said in a statement, though added it is notifying all of the affected taxpayers as a precaution.

The latest wave of taxpayers will be notified through the mail beginning Feb. 29, the IRS said.

“The IRS is committed to protecting taxpayers on multiple fronts against tax-related identity theft, and these mailings are part of that effort,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in Friday’s announcement. “We appreciate the work of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to identify these additional taxpayers whose accounts may have been accessed.”

The agency is offering all affected taxpayers free identity theft protection services and the chance to obtain an identity protection PIN, which helps protect Social Security numbers on returns.

Supreme Court Throws Out Ruling Against Catholic Group

A Catholic organization that was being threatened with fines by the IRS because they were not providing insurance coverage including contraception has been given a reprieve by the Supreme Court.

The court granted Michigan Catholic Conference their request for an exemption for religious regions against the mandate by the Department of Health and Human Services.  The ruling means that the previous decision against the group was vacated and the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit must consider the Hobby Lobby decision in reviewing the case.

A counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty praised the ruling in a message to the Christian Post.

“That’s what is so bizarre about the government’s position,” said Mark Rienzi a senior counsel with the Becket Fund.

“The government says they are not a ‘religious employer’ and therefore they have to sign forms to authorize and require other people to give out contraceptives for them. That makes no sense at all.”

Rienzi said the Court will likely have to take up one of these cases in the future.

I think that the Court will continue the path it has set in the long string of mandate cases to date … and it will protect religious ministries from this mandate,” said Rienzi.

“This whole fight is unnecessary and silly. Obviously the government can distribute contraceptives without the forced involvement of the Catholic Church and its ministries. The government can put a man on the moon — they can distribute pills without religious ministries.”

The group is the sixth the justices have sided with on the issue since December 2013.

Atheist Deal With IRS Subject Of Lawsuit

A legal group has filed suit in federal court concerning a deal the IRS made with an anti-religious organization to monitor churches.

The Alliance Defending Freedom says the IRS has failed to honor a Freedom of Information act request regarding the details of an agreement between the group and the anti-religious Freedom From Religion Foundation.

“As of the date of this complaint, Defendant has failed to: (i) determine whether to comply with the request; (ii) notify Plaintiff of any such determination or the reasons therefor; (iii) advise Plaintiff of the right to appeal any adverse determination; and/or (iv) produce the requested records or otherwise demonstrate that the requested records are exempt from production,” reads the complaint.

“Plaintiff is being irreparably harmed by reason of Defendant’s unlawful withholding of records responsive to Plaintiffs’ FOIA request, and Plaintiff will continue to be irreparably harmed unless Defendant is compelled to conform its conduct to the requirements of the law.”

The anti-religious group demanded in 2012 that the IRS enforce their view of the Johnson Amendment which strips churches of tax exemptions if they are openly involved in political activity.

This is the second suit against the IRS over agreements related to “monitoring of churches and other tax exempt religious organizations.”

IRS Customer Service at an All Time Low This Year

With the tax season about to begin and many people concerned about the way they have to handle Affordable Care Act changes, the IRS is making it more difficult for taxpayers to obtain help.

A report from the IRS blames Congress for budget cuts.

The official who represents taxpayers within the IRS, Nina Olson, warns that customer service will be at an all time low with less help on the phone, less help with tax preparation, and more obstacles when disputing an IRS mistake.

“I think that for taxpayers they will not be able to get assistance from the IRS; they will not get their questions answered,” Olson stated.

The IRS has refused to answer questions about what the IRS considers helplines for taxpayers.

Court Rules for IRS In Targeting Lawsuit

A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has sided with the IRS and thrown out lawsuits connected to the IRS targeting conservative and Christian groups.

Judge Reggie Walton ruled that the cases against the IRS for their actions were “moot” because the IRS claims they are no longer targeting conservative groups and because the IRS granted the tax-exempt statuses for the groups involved in the suit.

“After the plaintiff initiated this case, its application to the IRS for tax-exempt status was approved by the IRS. The allegedly unconstitutional governmental conduct, which delayed the processing of the plaintiff’s tax exempt application and brought about this litigation, is no longer impacting the plaintiff,” Walton said in his decision to throw out True the Vote’s lawsuit against the IRS.

This means that the IRS could begin targeting Christian or conservative groups again at any time because there is no legal prohibition to those actions.

“[T]he Court is satisfied that there is no reasonable expectation that the alleged conduct will recur, as the defendants have not only suspended the conduct, but have also taken remedial measures to ensure that the conduct is not repeated,” the judge wrote.

Pulpit Freedom Sunday Features Over A Thousand Pastors

Over a thousand pastors took to their pulpits on Sunday to say that Christ controls what they say to their congregations, not the government.

The Pulpit Initiative, part of the Alliance Defending Freedom, organized the 7th Annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday.  The goal is to have pastors “speak truth into every area of life from the pulpit.”

“Pastors should decide what they preach from the pulpit, not the IRS,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley, who oversees the observance. “Churches should be allowed to decide for themselves what they want to talk about. The IRS should not be the one making the decision by threatening to revoke a church’s tax-exempt status. There’s a growing chorus of pastors’ voices calling for a solution to this very real constitutional violation.”

The event had pastors participating from all fifty states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

The move is to point out the “Johnson Amendment” of 1954 that says churches cannot “participate in or intervene in” political campaigns.

“The real effect of the Johnson Amendment is that pastors are muzzled for fear of investigation by the IRS,” said ADF Litigation Counsel Christiana Holcomb. “Rather than risk confrontation, many pastors have self-censored their speech—afraid to apply the teachings of Scripture to specific candidates or elections. As in years past, the participants in Pulpit Freedom Sunday 2014 are taking a stand against being intimidated into sacrificing their First Amendment freedoms.”

Christian Groups Demand Release of IRS/Atheist Deal

Christian organizations are demanding the Internal Revenue Service release the details of a deal they made with the anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation to target churches and their tax-exempt status.

The agreement between the IRS and the anti-Christianists was part of a hearing in federal court on July 17th to settle a lawsuit brought in 2012.

The virulent anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation said that churches were illegally influencing the outcome of elections by talking to congregants about political issues from the pulpit during services.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition says that the IRS has a history of harassment of conservative and Christian groups, making this secret deal with those aiming to destroy Christians dangerous for all Americans.

“Given the history of the IRS in harassing, persecuting and infringing on the First Amendment rights of Christians and other people of faith, this is a deeply disturbing development,” said Ralph Reed, chairman of Faith & Freedom Coalition. “For the Christian community to be targeted for increased enforcement power and the threat of loss of tax-exempt status by this scandal-plagued agency defies logic, common sense, and any sound legal basis.”

The group is not the only ones looking into the secret deal.  Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has sent letters to the IRS and Department of Justice demanding to see all communications between the government and the anti-Christianists.

IRS Admits Leaking Information On Conservative Group

The IRS has admitted they leaked information on donors of a conservative group to liberal activists during the 2012 presidential campaign season.

Donors to the National Organization for Marriage had their confidential tax information given to a group that actively opposed N.O.M. The list included Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his opponents used the information during the election cycle.

The confidential information was then given to websites like the Huffington Post.

After denying the IRS was the source of the information, the group has now virtually admitted they had leaked the information by paying $50,000 to N.O.M. over the leak.

The IRS still claims no guilt over the leak but says that the document leak was an “inadvertent mistake” because it “failed to redact confidential information.”

N.O.M. has asked the Department of Justice to offer immunity to the man given the confidential information so the IRS leaker can be brought up on charges. The Justice Department has so far refused to provide immunity or pursue prosecution of those who received the confidential information.