On the recordJuly 31, 2012
I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of H.R. 4362, the Stopping Tax Offenders and Prosecuting Identity Theft Act of 2012, with my good friend and colleague, the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. This is a bipartisan bill that strengthens criminal penalties for tax return identity thieves. Tax fraud is a very real problem, and Congress should do all it can to protect citizens from this costly crime. Tax fraud through identity theft is a rapidly growing criminal enterprise in the United States. Criminals use stolen identities to steal income tax refunds from unsuspecting victims and from the Federal Government. With nothing more than stolen identity information--Social Security numbers and their corresponding names and birth dates--criminals have electronically filed thousands of false tax returns and have received hundreds of millions of dollars in wrongful refunds. The thieves deceive the Internal Revenue Service and file a return before the legitimate taxpayer files. The criminals then receive the refund, sometimes by check but often through a convenient but hard-to- trace prepaid debit card. The criminals then wait for the mail to deliver the cards and checks at abandoned addresses.…
