The IRS Is Letting Itself Be Robbed, Ho-Hum
A high-placed cop friend has told me that crime is trending electronic -- and will continue to go in that direction.

Dismayingly (but not surprisingly) the IRS is being scammed right and left via "stolen identity refund fraud," and Justin Gelfand, a former federal prosecutor, writes in the WSJ:

If the problem continues unabated, Treasury estimates the IRS will lose $21 billion in fraudulent tax refunds over the next five years. That's more than twice the Environmental Protection Agency's annual budget.

...Citizens must ask the IRS why it is so easy to steal money in this way, and why the IRS is losing so much money to this crime alone.

In some ways, the IRS is like a bank that is robbed after leaving the doors unlocked for the night with a large sign that says, "Money Inside!"--a victim, yes, but the victim of a crime that can easily be avoided.

While the IRS claims otherwise, the solution isn't particularly complex: stop wire-transferring multiple tax refunds onto the same prepaid debit card; stop mailing hundreds of tax-refund checks to the same mailbox; stop accepting thousands of tax returns from the same IP address without looking into it; and stop paying tax refunds without actually verifying the accuracy of the information with existing IRS records.

Ultimately, the law should be enforced. But this isn't a problem the government can prosecute its way out of. Instead of just demanding more prosecutions, the public should demand that the IRS increase its efforts to detect fraud before paying billions of dollars in fraudulent tax refunds. That way, victims won't have to wait months for the IRS to pay their legitimate tax refunds, Treasury won't lose billions of dollars to criminals, and the government can tackle this problem without the risk of sending innocent people to prison.

And people really believe the repurposed mall food court workers in TSA suits at the airport are really stopping terrorism?