Thread: Convict tells Congress defrauding IRS was easy

http://link.toolbot.com/boston.com/74211

Convict tells Congress defrauding IRS was easy

By Jim Abrams, Associated Press | April 13, 2007

WASHINGTON -- A man serving prison time for fraud told Congress yesterday that using stolen identities to apply for tax refunds was "an easy way to make money quickly."

"The system in my eyes is inviting criminals like myself to steal from the IRS, banks, et cetera," Evangelos Dimitros Soukas said in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee.

Soukas, 28, who is serving nearly eight years in prison for defrauding the government, banks, and individuals of $1.1 million, said he was puzzled why the Internal Revenue Service doesn't require personal identification numbers or use of a mother's maiden name when filing electronically or seeking information from IRS call centers.

The head of the IRS told the panel that stopping identity theft isn't simple, but the senators weren't mollified.

In a heated exchange, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, asked the IRS commissioner, Mark Everson, why he didn't carry out Soukas' s suggestions. Turning to Soukas, Baucus said his criminal acts were "not a mark of your accomplishment; it's a mark of the government's failure to protect taxpayers."

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the top Republican on the panel, also faulted the IRS, saying it was "not reaching out to help the taxpayers who fall victim, but is instead interrogating them as though they were the crooks."

Everson said he would study new electronic safeguards, but cautioned that there was a tradeoff between adding protections and efforts to make taxpaying more consumer-friendly.

"If you stop everything that you think is questionable, then you will be damaging the interests of many legitimate taxpayers," he said.

Soukas' s testimony was given only after a US district judge on Tuesday rejected a Justice Department argument that the Finance Committee had no right to ask a federal judge to order a federal prisoner to appear before the legislative body.

Prisoners have testified at hearings before, but committee lawyers said that this was the first time they'd heard such an argument.

"Justice is doing several things that are baffling," Baucus said in apparent reference to the dispute over the department's firing of prosecutors. "That's just one of them."

I say abolish the IRS!

Originally Posted by Dagmar

I say abolish the IRS!

Along with the Federal Reserve, and free the people from bondage.