IRS website hacked by fraudsters in $50m tax refund scam
IRS website hacked by fraudsters in $50m tax refund scam
A criminal investigation is under way in the U.S. after fraudsters stole personal tax information from an Internal Revenue Service website as part of an elaborate $50m scam. Congress is demanding answers over the serious security breach in which the details of more than 100,000 people were snatched by cyber thieves and used to claim fraudulent tax refunds. The information was stolen from an online IRS system called Get Transcript. This allows taxpayers to access tax returns and other tax filings from previous years.
We're confident that these are not amateurs. These actually are organized crime syndicates that not only we, but everybody in the financial industry, are dealing with.
IRS commissioner John Koskinen
To get hold of the information, the crooks cleared a security screen requiring knowledge about the taxpayer, including their social security number, date of birth, tax filing status and home address. The IRS said it is contacting those whose information was accessed and is providing them with credit monitoring services. Alongside the criminal investigation, the agency's inspector general has also launched an inquiry. More information is being sought on Capitol Hill over the IRS breach. The IRS said the thieves targeted the system from February to mid-May. The service has been temporarily shut down. In all, the thieves tried to access information from 200,000 taxpayers, the IRS said, and successfully got information on 104,000 of them. The agency is still trying to find out how many fraudulent tax refunds were claimed this year using information from the stolen transcripts. Giving a preliminary estimate, the IRS said less than $50m was successfully claimed.
