Two dozen Tennessee-based IRS workers have been accused of fraudulently obtaining unemployment benefits, food stamps, welfare and housing vouchers, illegally receiving a total of $250,000 in government benefits.
The thefts occurred while the workers were fully employed at the
Internal Revenue Service. The fraudsters were caught as part of an
ongoing investigation called “Operation Double Dip”, in which the
IRS tries to catch employees who steal government benefits.
“You’ve got these employees that are taking advantage of the
system that they are so intimate with it by virtue of their
jobs,” Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirech told
The Tennessean. “It’s doubly frustrating.”
Thirteen employees have been indicted on federal charges that they
lied to fraudulently get the benefits, and are facing up to five
years in prison for making false statements. The 11 other employees
have been indicted on state charges for theft of more than $1,000
each, and each face a felony sentence that can result in 12 years
imprisonment.
“While these IRS employees were supposed to be serving the public,
they were instead brazenly stealing from law-abiding American
taxpayers,” US Attorney Edward Stanton told the Associated
Press in a statement.
“The taxes that we pay are supposed to support our nation and
assist individuals in need, not free-loaders who are gaming the
system,” Weirich, whose office is handling the prosecutions,
told the newswire.
The 24 indicted IRS workers range in ages from 28 to 64 and
originate from Tennessee and Mississippi.
Operation Double Dip recently also discovered that the state of
Tennessee has overpaid unemployment benefits by $73.4 million over
the past six years, which is drawn from a Department of Labor and
Workforce Development trust that employers pay into. IRS
investigators also found that seven deceased Tennesseans had
received a total of $12,387 – most of which were fraudulent
payments. For the fiscal year that ended last June, the state
reported an overpayment rate of 14.9 percent – which ranks it among
the top US states with the highest number of fraudulent
unemployment benefit claims and payments.
After auditing the state of Tennessee and discovering the
overpayments, investigators discovered the 24 state employees who
received the $126,000 in fraudulent unemployment benefits.
“Both current and former employees, they were just bilking money
from the government, from the state and the federal government –
housing, unemployment, food stamps, welfare, all of that,”
Weirich told the Tennessean. “You would expect better from an
IRS agent. We all expect better from all of our government
employees.”
But fraudulent refunds are not limited to the state of
Tennessee: the IRS reported
losing $5.2 billion to identity thieves in the fiscal year 2011,
failing to detect as many as 1.5 million false tax returns and
fraudulent refunds. With the high rate of identity theft and with
IRS employees falsely claiming benefits, the agency has a plethora
of crime to tackle if it hopes to minimize its tax gap.