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Justice and IRS officials said this won’t be the last tax fraud enforcement surge of its kind. But it’s not yet clear how much money they’ll claw back from suspected fraudsters.
The Justice Department, working with the IRS and its criminal investigation unit, is stepping up efforts to prosecute cases of alleged tax fraud.
DOJ told reporters Wednesday that the tax section of its newly established National Fraud Enforcement Division is prosecuting 76 individuals for $490 million in alleged tax fraud schemes.
Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald, the head of DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, said that those 76 prosecutions are a mix of new charges filed this week, as well as dozens of convictions through guilty pleas and “numerous sentencings of criminal fraudsters”
DOJ is touting these prosecutions as the results of its first “national tax enforcement surge,” which began in early September.
The Government Accountability Office estimates the federal government loses up to $304 billion in tax fraud annually. McDonald said more taxpayer dollars go to fraudsters every year than the combined budgets of the Departments of Energy, Justice, and Interior.
“No program is off limits for a fraudster. They will take from all of us until there is nothing left. Fraud against the American taxpayer is a crisis of the first order,” McDonald said.
