IRS Criminal Investigation 2013 Report

The Internal Revenue Service today announced the release of its IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) Annual Report for fiscal year 2013, reflecting significant increases in enforcement actions against tax criminals and a robust rise in convictions, including identity theft.

High points of fiscal year 2013 include a 12.5 percent increase in investigations initiated compared to the prior year and a nearly 18 percent gain in prosecution recommendations. Specifically, CI initiated 5,314 cases and recommended 4,364 cases for prosecution. These increases were accomplished at a time when agent resources decreased more than 5 percent.
Meanwhile, convictions rose more than 25 percent compared to the prior year. The conviction rate for fiscal 2013 was 93 percent.

CI continues to play a vital role in the fight against identity theft. CI initiated over 1,400 investigations and recommended prosecution of over 1,250 individuals who were involved in identity theft crimes during fiscal 2013.

As an active partner in over 35 Identity Theft Task Forces, CI works side-by-side with federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies to combat the threat of this insidious crime.

"The Alliance represents true teamwork by all levels of law enforcement," Weber said. "Individuals who commit identity theft demonstrate a blatant disregard of the integrity of the United States tax system and cause immeasurable hardship to innocent victims."

In addition, the 36-page report summarizes a wide variety of IRS CI activity on a range of tax crimes, money laundering, public corruption, terrorist financing and narcotics trafficking financial crimes during the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2013.