This is the third in a series of blogs looking at tax fraud. At stoptheftclass.com we try to help people who seem to feel a need to steal, and tax fraud is a major problem. Just how bad is the problem? One police chief claims street crime is down because of identity theft and tax fraud!

So just what is the IRS doing to stop this problem? As reported in www.bostonglobe.com.

The IRS uses a series of filters that are increasingly successful in catching identity thefts before refunds are paid, yet this problem has exploded and the agency is in a constant race to keep its detection techniques a step ahead of the thieves. One IRS official went so far as to describe the situation as like a game “Whac-a-Mole.” knock them down here and they come up over there.

One of the primary victim of identity theft are military personnel who had their identities stolen while deployed, and parents who learned that their recently deceased child’s identity had been pilfered. These cases are just heart-wrenching.

Do you know who is going into the tax fraud business? Experts know that drug dealers go into this because it is easy access to money. Gangs go into this because it is easy access to money.

The penalty can be quite severe. The average prison sentence for taxpayer identity theft last year was more than three years, and the longest was 26 years. We will continue to look at this topic in the next stoptheftclass.com blog.