There’s an update to a case previously noted on this site. Two North Miami brothers were sentenced for an identity theft tax fraud scheme involving students and other individuals’ personal identifying information. Rigo Octavio Lopez, 25, and Luis Daniel Lopez Morales, 19, were each sentenced to 48 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release,…
Category: ID Theft
IRS: Hackers May Have Stolen Tax Information From Additional 220,000
Julianne Pepitone reports: The Internal Revenue Service revealed Monday that criminals potentially accessed tax information for a total of 338,000 taxpayers — triple the amount feared when the breach was first disclosed in May. The IRS had originally said that hackers potentially accessed information for 114,000 taxpayers via an online system. The agency did a further review and…
Credit Monitoring Services Following Data Breach NOT Taxable Income to Employees, IRS Announces
Joe Lazzarotti writes: When an employer is responding to a breach of their employees’ personal information, one of the last things they may think about is whether the value of the credit monitoring or other identity protection services they make available to affected employees should be considered taxable to the employees and reported as such. In Announcement…
3 sentenced in ID theft/tax refund scheme started in Manatee County jail
The Bradenton Herald reports: A former parole worker at Manatee County jail and two other people have been sentenced to federal prison for their roles in a conspiracy to commit stolen identity refund fraud in Manatee between 2012-13. According to court documents, Marcus Lowe, 32, of Tampa worked for Manatee County Parole Services Division at…
32 members and associates of Long Beach Insane Crip street gang tied to $14.3 million ID theft and tax refund fraud scheme
LOS ANGELES – Attorney General Kamala D. Harris announced today the takedown of a Long Beach Crip street gang that operated an identity theft scheme to perpetrate tax fraud, stealing over $3.3 million and attempting to steal over $11 million via tax fraud. The operation resulted in 22 members of the Insane Crip street gang being…
Woman accused of stealing identities of coworkers, going shopping
Kate Jacobson reports that Elexes Thaddies, 24, was arrested and charged with stealing co-workers’ information to pay her bills and to go shopping with. There are at least 20 victims – most of whom were employees at Bethesda Hospital in Boynton Beach, where Thaddies worked. Read more on Sun Sentinel.