Identity Theft, Tax Fraud Snares Prisoners
Source: WSJ
A raft of federal prosecutions has uncovered tax-fraud schemes involving the theft of Social Security numbers of U.S. prisoners, in many cases by corrections employees.
Last year alone, federal courts meted out prison sentences to an Alabama bail bondsman, two former Alabama corrections employees, a Florida corrections officer and a Georgia man, who were convicted separately of stealing the identities of more than 1,200 prisoners and claiming more than $6.5 million in tax refunds under the inmates’ names. In January, a Kentucky judge sentenced a local corrections officer to three years in prison for filching prisoner information to open up credit-card accounts with Capital One, Barclays Bank and Victoria’s Secret.
(snip)
Identity theft can make it even harder for ex-convicts, who already face hurdles getting a job or housing, to support themselves as they try to re-enter society, social workers say. The Local Initiatives Support Corp., which provided nearly 7,000 ex-offenders around the country with financial coaching and job training in 2014, found that more than 20% of prisoners had inconsistencies on their credit reports, a large portion of which were linked to identity theft, a spokeswoman said.
Read more: http://www.wsj.com/articles/identity-theft-tax-fraud-snares-prisoners-1426167463
= new reply since forum marked as read
