The IRS is investigating a huge $200 million, 'fake Tesla income' tax refund fraud
... [+]U.S. tax authorities were duped into sending $13.8 million to fraudsters who had filed false refund claims to the tune of $210 million, according to a government application for the forfeiture of a property in California obtained byAllegedly perpetrated between 2016 and 2020, it could be one of the biggest tax refund frauds ever seen in the country.
The IRS only detailed one of the alleged schemers’ activities , who filed false returns through a trust he ran and claimed to have received significant interest income from a number of major banks as well as electric car maker Tesla and payments giant PayPal, according to the forfeiture application. Interest income is the amount due from a company to an investor or lender for taking their money.
The defendant was named in the court filing as “a principal orchestrator” of the fraud, informed the IRS that those companies had paid that income on to the IRS but the tax authority said the claims were “entirely fictional,” according to the government. Using those funds, the accused bought a $1.8 million property in Malibu, California, which was the subject of the forfeiture application, the IRS wrote.
No charges have yet been filed against the suspect. He had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication. Neither the IRS nor the Justice Department had responded to requests for comment. The crime, if the IRS claims are accurate, would be huge compared to others, especially the nearly $14 million the accused were able to retrieve from the government. Ashowed that for the 2020 tax year, the IRS discovered 30,038 fraudulent refund returns, totalling $135 million in refunds. But the agency managed to prevent $133 million actually being refunded, meaning only $2 million was given back.
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