Lansing, MI
So how do the identity thieves know how much of a refund is due? Or doesn’t the IRS check that?
You can submit pretty much anything you want to the IRS. It’s only when you get to the audit do they as “is this true?”
The identity thieves do not need to “know” how much of a refund is due. They simply acquire the minimum identification necessary to file a return, then synthesize a return, file it and have the refund amount directed either to an address they can access or via a debit card, which they pull out of the mail. The IRS may audit the return (or they may not) but that will be at least a year, by which time the ID thieves have moved on. This is an epidemic of activity in Miami and Tampa. Police in Tampa have said that they are aware of organized criminals who have suspended their drug distribution activities and re-allocated resources to this kind of fraud, because the “return on investment” is so much better. The debit card balances are immediately tapped, converted into money orders or other transfers which make the chain of funds hard to trace. A lot of firepower on the streets in the hands of organized criminals has been purchased with the proceeds of this fraud, and the IRS seems not to be in much of a hurry to stamp it out.
We have a Lansing here in Ks, home of the Federal Prison, so it jumped in my mind first.