{"id":774,"date":"2016-05-25T10:15:34","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T15:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/?p=774"},"modified":"2016-05-25T13:13:19","modified_gmt":"2016-05-25T18:13:19","slug":"five-individuals-arrested-for-fraud-in-irs-phone-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/five-individuals-arrested-for-fraud-in-irs-phone-scams\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Individuals Arrested for Fraud in IRS Phone Scams"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), announced the arrests of five individuals based upon criminal complaints alleging that they were involved in schemes to impersonate Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents and use the threat of arrest to obtain money from victims by falsely representing that the victims owed back taxes or other fees.<\/p>\n

TIGTA agents arrested the five suspects in Miami, FL, without incident on May 23, 2016, for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.\u00a0 According to the court documents, the suspects are responsible for almost $2 million in schemes that defrauded more than 1,500 victims.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese arrests indicate that TIGTA is making significant progress in our investigation of the IRS impersonation scam that continues to sweep the country, resulting in reported taxpayer losses of more than $36 million, averaging more than $5,700 in losses per taxpayer,\u201d the Inspector General said.\u00a0 \u201cThe scammers are relentless and so are we,\u201d he added.\u00a0 \u201cOur investigators will not rest until we have brought each individual involved to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"woman<\/a>The five individuals are: Jennifer Valerino Nunez, Dennis Delgado Caballero, Arnoldo Perez Mirabal, Yaritza Espinosa Diaz, and Roberto Fontanella Caballero.\u00a0 The criminal complaints were filed with the following courts:\u00a0 the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota on May 18, 2016 (Yaritza Diaz and Roberto Caballero); the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on May 16, 2016 (Arnoldo Mirabal); and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas on May 10, 2016 (Jennifer Nunez and Dennis Caballero).<\/p>\n

According to the court documents, the suspects knowingly conspired with others to commit wire fraud by falsely impersonating IRS agents and demanding money under such false pretenses. \u00a0Victims received telephone calls from people claiming to be from the IRS, who told them the IRS would arrest them if they did not make payment immediately.\u00a0 The callers made these threats and used other methods of intimidation to persuade the victims to wire money, utilizing MoneyGram, Walmart–2–Walmart, and other wire services.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo legitimate United States Treasury or IRS official will demand that anyone make payments via MoneyGram, Western Union, Walmart–2–Walmart, or any other money wiring method, for any debt to the IRS or the Department of the Treasury,\u201d George said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNor will the Department of the Treasury demand that anyone pay a debt or secure one by using iTunes cards or other prepaid debit cards,\u201d he said, adding, \u00a0\u201cHang up on these fraudulent callers and go to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) scam reporting page<\/u><\/a> to report the call.\u201d<\/p>\n

Investigators verified the identity of the suspects and their activities through a variety of investigative procedures.\u00a0 TIGTA Special Agents conducted the investigations that led to the arrests of the suspects.\u00a0 TIGTA received assistance in one of the investigations from the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General and and the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging led by Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Ranking Member Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri).<\/p>\n

The suspects have been referred to the appropriate Office of the U.S. Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, for prosecution and additional legal action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), announced the arrests of five individuals based upon criminal complaints alleging that they were involved in schemes to impersonate Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents and use the threat of arrest to obtain money from victims by falsely representing that the victims owed back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2016-05-25T15:15:42Z","apple_news_api_id":"d34211b0-ad41-4157-adc8-f25fd667dbe9","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2016-05-25T18:13:28Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A00IRsK1BQVetyPJf1mfb6Q","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-irs-phone-scam"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookco.us\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}