Utah Tax Commission flags thousands of potential fake returns
Salt Lake Tribune
Fraudsters are using stolen personal information to file fake tax returns for real Utahns, hoping to steal refund money, the Utah State Tax Commission said Thursday.
The commission has identified 28 fraudulent filings so far, but has flagged 8,000 others as potential frauds. It said 18 other states so far have identified similar problems.
Extra screening to detect fake returns means Utahns can likely expect a delay in processing of their refunds, a commission spokesman said.
"Utah taxpayers who filed state-income tax returns electronically prior to 2014 through third-party vendors are potentially affected," the commission warned. It said it will reach out "individually" to alert those confirmed as victims.
Commission spokesman Charlie Roberts said it found that personal information has been stolen from previous returns filed through TurboTax. He said the commission is not yet sure if other programs and companies were affected, nor if the data was stolen from the cloud or some other means.
More than 200,000 people filed electronically last year — close to 20 percent of all returns — and that number is expected to grow this year.
The problems were found through the commission's fraud-detection systems. It also said It was contacted by some taxpayers who tried to file returns through TurboTax who received a message that their return had already been filed.
The commission said its own data remains secure.
The perils of private corporations handling sensitive data without oversight comes home to roost.
Coming at the start of tax season this could be a MAJOR headache to the entire country if the problem spreads beyond Utah. Intuit also makes Quickbooks which would have a LOT of highly useful information for a criminal enterprise or hostile government (say North Korea) to use to cause chaos in the U.S. economy.
Hard to see how they are going to blame this one on Obama, but I have confidence they will.