IRS Says Thieves Stole Tax Info From 100,000
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marcnorman/iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -– More than 100,000 taxpayers may of had some of their private information stolen from IRS computers during this tax season.
The agency said on Tuesday that sophisticated thieves managed to steal some of that information outside the IRS to get in and get illegal refunds.
According to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, the thieves got into their system through the front door, using social security and other numbers they found outside the IRS.
The thieves reportedly used an online service provided by the agency to gain access to information from more than one-hundred-thousand taxpayers. The service called “Get Transcript” has been temporarily shut down.
The commissioner told reporters in a teleconference that “of the 200,000 that tried and the 104,000 that got through, it’s likely that it’s gonna turn out that fewer than 15,000 fraudulent returns made it through as a result of this activity.”
The majority of the breaches happened from mid-February to mid-May when it was discovered.
Commissioner Koskinen reassured reporters on a conference call on Tuesday that his agency is getting better at detecting fraud, but it’s not perfect.
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