Should we be surprised that scammers are lurking in every corner, waiting to pounce on the next easy opportunity to rip off people’s hard earned money?
This latest scam involved ripping off the US government by filing fraudulent first time home buyer paperwork. And the perpetrators?
Prison inmates.
Over 1,200 inmates, some serving life sentences, filed paperwork and bilked the government out of almost $30 million. Even though it is possible for inmates to purchase property for their families, many of these inmates filed multiple claims or filed them outside of the alloted time frame.
The IRS said it “has devoted substantial resources to working with state and federal prison systems to collect and maintain information on the prison population.”
However, even some IRS employees were also caught filing suspect paperwork.
In their defense, they also claim that as many as 400,000 claims were blocked or denied, saving the taxpayers about $1 billion. And they do have multiple investigations pending to rectify the rip off.
For more details, read the full story here.
