It is the only federal law enforcement agency authorized to investigate federal criminal tax violations and pursues related financial crimes, such as money laundering, currency violations, and terrorist financing.
Law Enforcement Efforts, for Example, Agents Expend Substantial Energy Unpacking Domestic and Offshore
Tax Avoidance Strategies That are Facilitated Through
Trust and Partnership Arrangements.
In recent years, CI has significantly expanded its presence in areas of emerging importance. Since 2015, it has built up a world-class cybercrimes program to address the exponential growth of cybercrimes impacting the tax, financial, and economic systems of the U.S. This group successfully seized more than $3.5 billion of illicit cryptocurrency in fiscal year 2021, and they have already seized more than this amount in fiscal year 2022.
A snapshot of recent IRS CI work
1. Russian Bank Founder Sentenced For Evading Taxes
In
2013, when the value of Oleg Tinkov’s investment in his Russian bank’s stock
rose to over $1 billion, he quickly renounced his U.S. citizenship and
substantially understated his wealth on tax filings with the IRS to avoid exit
taxes. Expatriation law requires that those with a net worth of more than $2
million pay taxes on their assets as if they were sold on the day before
expatriation, but despite the value of his post-Initial Public Offering assets
rising to above $1.1 billion, Tinkov claimed he did not have assets above $2
million. In addition, he did not report any gain from the constructive sale of
his property worth more than $1.1 billion, causing a tax loss of nearly $250
million. A year after his expatriation, Tinkov was the 15th richest oligarch in
Russia, with an estimated net worth of over $8 billion.
Tinkov
was indicted in September of 2019 for willfully filing false tax returns
following an investigation by CI agents, and he was arrested in February 2020.
As part of his restitution, Oleg Tinkov paid $508,936,184, which is more than
double the amount he sought to escape paying to the U.S. Treasury through
renouncing his U.S. citizenship and concealing from the IRS large stock gains,
which he knew were reportable. This payment includes $248,525,339 in taxes,
statutory interest on that tax, and a nearly $100 million fraud penalty.
2. $1.3 Billion Tax Shelter Scheme
IRS-CI’s
primary resource commitment involves the investigation of tax crimes, which
constitute over 70% of investigative time by CI agents. Resources are
especially focused on unpacking complex structures that facilitate abusive tax
schemes by wealthy individuals and corporations.
To
take a recent example, in February 2022, a grand jury returned an indictment of
seven individuals with conspiracy to defraud the United States and other crimes
because of their promotion of fraudulent tax shelters involving syndicated
conservation easements for at least two decades. The co-conspirators allegedly
guaranteed a 4-to-1 tax deduction ratio to their clients and invoked various
schemes to value easements as necessary to deliver the ratio promised. The
indictment charged that these were abusive tax shelters lacking in economic
substance and further contended that the defendants helped clients claim
illicit charitable deductions after the conclusion of tax years through
backdating documents. In total, the defendants allegedly sold over $1.3 billion
in false and fraudulent tax deductions through their crimes.
Over
the course of a four-year investigation, IRS-CI agents dedicated thousands of
hours to unpacking the schemes these perpetrators allegedly facilitated to help
their wealthy clients skirt tax obligations. These kinds of investigations
involve incredibly complicated work for the CI team, as the tax shelters are
often intentionally designed to impede the ability of the IRS to detect their
fraudulent nature, including through appraisals that overinflate land values
and fake votes among participants meant to create the illusion that the transactions
are legitimate real estate investment opportunities and not abusive tax
shelters. With additional resources and investigative support, IRS-CI could
reduce the investigative time and ensure that criminals are held accountable
quicker.
3. $3.6 Billionof Stolen Cryptocurrency Seized In FY 2021 (Already Surpassed In FY 2022)
Over
the last several years, CI has observed significant growth in the number of
criminals using the cyber environment for fraud and illicit transactions. This
criminality is made possible by an underlying technological ecosystem that
facilitates remaining anonymous and eluding law enforcement while concealing
financial transactions, ownership of assets, or other evidence. The possibility
that these technologies will be deployed to facilitate sanctions evasion is
also top-of-mind for CI investigators at present.
In
order to navigate this landscape, CI must deploy sophisticated blockchain
analysis tools to unweave darknet transactions. For example, following the
prosecution of Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht in 2015 for several criminal
counts, CI agents were tasked with the persistent investigation of stolen funds
from this and other dark net marketplaces. As a result of their determined and
resolute action, CI agents seized approximately $1 billion of Bitcoin in 2020.
Finding these funds required the efforts of several CI agents and contractors,
including the use of third-party analytic tools to trace assets to individuals
who had hacked Silk Road to pocket illicit gains.
Even
more recently, in February of this year, two individuals were arrested for
laundering cryptocurrency stolen during a 2016 hack of a digital asset
exchange. Thus far, $3.6 billion has been seized by CI agents who managed to
track unauthorized transactions that sent stolen Bitcoin from this hack to
digital wallets under the control of the launderers. The defendants allegedly
employed numerous complex techniques to hide these funds, including automating
transactions to quickly move funds and then deposit them into a variety of
currency exchanges and darknet markets and withdrawing funds to break the chain
of transactions and impeded detection.
Despite
this complexity, today CI currently devotes only about six percent of its
investigative time to cybercrimes/crypto currency, so it is just scratching the
surface of the amount of criminal activity that is being detected.
Click IRS-CI Highlights for more examples of the types of cases in which CI has led or been significantly involved in over the last few years.
Given the magnitude of the challenge it faces, it is imperative for CI to be adequately funded to investigate and prosecute criminals. CI, like the rest of the IRS, is in desperate need of stable, long-term funding to develop a deeper understanding of the global financial landscape and trace and seize assets that today are in the hands of criminals.
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