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April 11, 2014

IRS to target identity theft more

April 14, 2014 – The IRS on Friday said it will investigate and prosecute more identity theft cases and that it had begun 295 new identity theft investigations this year.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said, "Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes nationwide, and refund fraud caused by identity theft is one of the biggest challenges facing the IRS. The investigative work done by Criminal Investigation (CI) is a part of an aggressive effort by the IRS to combat this issue on all fronts."

The IRS said it has almost 1,900 open investigations currently. It has made 272 prosecution recommendations this year and 221 indictments. It started almost 1,500 investigations in fiscal year 2013.

According to The Hill, federal watchdogs, including the Government Accountability Office, have criticized the agency in the past for not having hard numbers on how frequently identity theft occurs or how much it costs the government and taxpayers.