The Cyber Crime Unit of the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation Division released a report on its activities, which included seizing $3.5 billion in cryptocurrency in fiscal year 2021 (93% of all of its seizures). The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act contained provisions expanding the reporting requirements for cryptocurrency, so this will continue to be a focus for the CI division. The report also noted that in 2021, the CI division identified $2.19 billion in tax fraud and another $8.18 billion in other financial crimes. Tax-related issues accounted for 72% of its direct investigative time, with 15.4% spent on non-tax issues such as money laundering and corporate fraud, and 11.2% spent on narcotics crimes. (www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p3583.pdf)
CPAs, get four hours of fraud CPE with our 2021 Fundamentals of Fraud Prevention & Detection On-Demand Webinar. Click here for more information.