.png)
The Internal Revenue Service said on Tuesday that it cracked down on identity thieves filing fake tax returns worth a total of $1.4 billion dollars, according to media reports Jan. 31.
The IRS and the Justice Department said that 260,000 false returns were stopped. “There is no doubt in the last couple of years this rate of fraud has gone up,” IRS Deputy Commissioner Steve Miller told Reuters at a press conference.
Miller said that it “was a massive effort” in a nationwide sting, according to the Wall Street Journal. He added that it took “many months” to complete, leading to the arrest of 58 people who face 939 criminal charges in 23 states.
In 2010, Miller said there were only 50,000 false returns totaling $247 million caught by U.S. officials, adding that “the rate of this sort of fraud has gone up,” according to the Journal.
The U.S. Postal Service and the Secret Service also aided the investigation.