Next up-—prisoners with a hobby: tax fraud
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/01/eveningnews/main7107698.shtml
Dec. 1, 2010
Inmates Commit $130 Million in Tax Fraud in 2009
Prisoners Use Basic Tax Forms to Claim Phony Income or Tax Credits, Often With no Supporting Documents
-—AND-—
WASHINGTON, June 23, 2010
Even Prisoners Get Homebuyer Tax Break
Prison-Bound Filers Among 14,000 First-Time Homebuyer Applicants Who Wrongly Got $27M in Credit
The prisoner articles above are from 2010.....but in 2008 Congress passed the Inmate Tax Fraud Prevention Act:
IRS dithers while prisoners file phony tax returns, collect millions in refunds
By: Byron York 01/04/11
The number of prisoners who file false tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service has more than doubled in the last five years, according to a new Treasury Department report, and the amount of money the IRS has mistakenly refunded to those prisoners has nearly tripled. Meanwhile, the report, from the Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration, accuses the IRS of failing to enforce a law passed by Congress in 2008 to crack down on false returns coming from the nation’s prisons.