well I was living the mail and noticed
the names did not match the people to
get the house richard russo has been a
letter carrier for 13 years and knows
the people who live on his route so he
was suspicious when he started seeing
one address getting multiple Treasury
checks with different names I started
actually collecting the checks and
bringing them back to the office this is
an identity theft investigation which
begins with perpetrators stealing
people's or buying people's I dental
Security numbers with that information
scam artists can file for a fraudulent
tax refund because the US Treasury check
has to be issued to a specific address
thieves either pay an accomplice to pick
up the check or pick it up themselves
actually at one time there was every
house on the street was getting one and
they were all fraudulent names where did
thieves get the stolen IDs from black
market list or by bribing an employee
with access to a big database they even
troll underground websites inspectors
say Puerto Rican residents appear to be
a target Puerto Rican residents are not
required to file a federal tax return if
they have not worked outside of Puerto
Rico within the last year so they were
only required to file state returns
experts say the scam is easy to pull off
especially with electronic filing the
IRS does not cross check all returns
against employer payroll records before
a refund is issued so in one particular
day I had about you know
10 checks one day next city was 10
another day there was about 20 so in all
i had about i just told about nine
hundred thousand dollars worth of show
these checks