In the News

By Donna Gehrke-White, Sun Sentinel

The Broward Sheriff's Office has been swamped with an "escalating epidemic" of identities being stolen and used to file bogus tax returns before taxpayers could file legitimate returns.

BSO Sgt. Jay Leiner said his economic crimes unit has been deluged with more than 1,000 reports of tax-related identity theft since February.

"It was bad last year — now it's obscene," said Ronald Myers, a Fort Lauderdale certified public accountant. He appeared with U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz at a news conference Friday at BSO headquarters in Fort Lauderdale.

Wasserman Schultz was there to announce new tax-refund identity theft legislation that she will introduce Monday when she returns to Washington.

Myers said South Florida tax preparers are seeing up to 8 percent of their clients' identities stolen before they can file 2011 tax returns.

The story's the same in Palm Beach County.

"We took at least 1,000" reports, said Teri Barbera, spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties lead the nation's largest metro areas in reported identity theft, according to a report released last month by the Federal Trade Commission. The three counties had 17,546 reports of identity theft in 2011, or 324 complaints per 100,000 people.

"The federal government must become more vigilant in stopping tax-related identity theft," Wasserman Schultz said.

The thefts delay taxpayers' legitimate refunds — sometimes for more a year, the congresswoman said.

Joan Rubinstein of Pembroke Pines, said she couldn't pay her daughter's college expenses because thieves stole and used her identity last year before she could file her 2010 returns.

She waited a year for her refund, she said, and got it only after she complained to Wasserman Schultz's office.

Rubinstein, a preschool teacher, said she tried to file her 2011 returns this year — but identity thieves had filed in her name.

"It's very frustrating that it's two years in a row," she said.

The congresswoman said she will push for tougher sentences — a minimum two-year prison sentence for each tax return identity theft conviction instead of the current up-to-two-year term. If suspects were convicted of, say, 10 counts of the theft, then they could face 20 years in prison.

"That would help deter," Wasserman Schultz said. Right now, she added, "it is a low-risk crime" that costs U.S. taxpayers $5.8 billion in fraudulent tax refunds in 2011.

Wasserman Schultz's bill, called Stopping Tax Offenders and Prosecuting Identity Theft Act or STOP IT, seeks to protect both individual taxpayers and groups who also have been hit by the tax-return identity theft, she said.

The bill also would require theU.S. Department of Justiceto focus on communities that have been hard hit by the tax identity theft, such as South Florida.

"The DOJ needs to make it a higher priority," to combat the rash of identity theft, Wasserman Schultz said.

U.S.Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, whose office received more than 150 pleas for help from victims of tax-return identity theft, also filed legislation to toughen prison sentences of convicted identity thieves.

His bill would impose a fine of no less than $25,000 for using another's Social Security or Taxpayer Identification numbers to file a false federal tax return. His bill also would require the Internal Revenue Service to develop a nationwide PIN system that identity-theft victims can use on tax returns, similar to a pilot program the IRS is using.

Another bill now before Congress that Wasserman Schultz is co-sponsoring would remove Social Security numbers from Medicare cards — a change many of South Florida's 872,000 seniors have been seeking to help fight identity theft.