"Identity criminals claiming millions in tax refund fraud"

Associate Professor Alex Steel comments on how identity crime has become easier to commit as "modern life gets faster and faster" (The Age, 3 October 2011). See summary below:

STOLEN tax file numbers have been used to lodge as many as 5000 fraudulent tax refunds, worth $27 million, in just three months as identity criminals increasingly attempt to defraud government departments.

Since July, the Tax Office has reviewed about 68,000 claims, with refunds worth more than $285 million. At least 5000 of those claims are suspected cases of identity crime, the Tax Office confirmed.

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