Imagine that you receive a lot of tax documents that tell you and the IRS about a lot of money you earned when, in fact, you never received a penny.
Because? Because someone stole your identity and used it to collect much of the change, leaving you with tax liability.
CBS San Francisco reports that one of its viewers has been living with this nightmare for the past five years with no apparent relief.
“It should be pretty easy to try to identify who the perpetrators are,” said Richard, whose last name the station agreed not to use.
Richard works full-time as an investment banker at a major financial institution.
His ordeal began in 2017 when he obtained tax documents reporting the money he allegedly received from a large technology company.
“As of 2017, I started receiving these 1099 from Google and never worked for them. It was very suspicious,” he explained.
Richard’s identity had been stolen. He notified Google and the federal authorities.
Google canceled tax reports. Still, the 1099s keep coming.
“It’s frustrating. I mean, I can’t even count the number of hours I’ve spent trying to deal with it every year,” Richard said.
Each year, at tax time, Google sends Richard 1099 reports, which are primarily for miscellaneous income. He told CBS San Francisco that he was later forced to contact Google to cancel them.
The 1099s are mailed to an old address where relatives live. This year has been by far the worst.
“I was sent seventeen 1099,” Richard said, gesturing toward a pile of documents.
We asked Richard about the total allegedly paid to someone who was using his stolen identity.
“Over the last five years, about $ 100,000,” he said.
Revenue comes from ad revenue provided by one of Google’s programs known as AdSense.
If you agree to host ads on your website, you can make money with your business. Someone using Richard’s stolen identity signed up for the service and created multiple accounts. No taxes were withheld.
“My worst fear is that all this income is reported to my social security number and I didn’t actually earn it, did I? And the IRS will come after me in a few years, he audits me and says, “Hey, there’s everything. You didn’t report that income and all ten taxes,” Richard said.
Richard is not the only victim.
“This 1099 had all my credentials. I didn’t put the credentials in. Someone else did it and took the money into their own account,” said Patrick Reames, an expert in the energy and commodities trading industry.
Reames is the founder and managing partner of Commodity Technology Advisory. The company offers expert analysis of commodity trading and risk management and technology market issues and trends.
He is an accredited author on Amazon who writes textbooks on software. The books are sold online and generate a few hundred dollars a year.
Reames told CBS San Francisco that in 2018 he obtained an Amazon 1099-MISC tax form.
About him, the technology company reported to the IRS that he paid a lot of money to Reames, according to his account, tens of thousands of dollars.
The author logged on and found out that someone was posing as him and was selling a very expensive paperback book for over $ 500 a copy.
He glanced online inside the book and was surprised.
“It was basically computer-generated nonsense,” Reames said.
He called Amazon for help. He told CBS San Francisco that Amazon told him he would not correct his 1099 because he could not prove fraud.
Reames then asked Amazon to tell him which books the money was associated with or where Amazon sent it. Amazon refused.
He is also very frustrated.
“I was stuck with a tax bill and I didn’t receive any copyright for any kind of identity theft,” Reames said.
CBS San Francisco contacted numerous federal officials about the issue. None provided any statistics.
However, a cybersecurity expert fears it is more common than not.
“Who knows how big this 1099 problem is? I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said cybersecurity expert Andrew Grotto.
Grotto directs the Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance program at Stanford University.
He was the senior director of cybersecurity policy at the White House in both the Obama administration and the Trump administration.
Grotto explained that technology platforms by their very nature facilitate the maneuvering of criminals and fraud.
“Some part is anonymity. Another part is the immensity of the ecosystem that the platforms create and, you know, controlling every transaction, every application that is active on the platform is very, very difficult.” said the grotto.
CBS San Francisco contacted both Amazon and Google. They made the following statements:
“We have established measures in place to enforce our publishing guidelines and to promptly investigate any reported issues.”
– Amazon spokesman.
“Our policies and terms of service prohibit AdSense users from operating multiple AdSense accounts or providing inaccurate or fraudulent personal and payment information. After review, we have disabled all AdSense accounts that we believe are false affiliated with the viewer, because they violate our policies and policies. “
– Google spokesperson.
CBS San Francisco asked the two companies very specific questions about what happened to Richard and Patrick Reames, including whether law enforcement has contacted the companies, what obligations they have to avoid the use of identities stolen from their platforms and what steps they take to help. people who have been the victims of identity theft on their platforms. They did not answer these specific questions.
Google did not say directly whether Richard would continue to receive 1099-MISC forms from them each year.
CBS San Francisco showed the statement to cybersecurity expert Grotto for his opinion on whether Richard’s nightmare was over.
“It doesn’t look like it, no,” Grotto replied.
The station showed Google the statement to Richard. I was disappointed.
“I’m not sure what they’ve done so far will stop this from happening again,” he said.
Richard can’t understand why Google can’t dial his Social Security number to prevent criminals from using it in the future. He wants Google to take those who have hacked his identity, pay them with his name and leave him the tax bill.
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- IRS
- frau
- tax fraud
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