Kevin E. Packman is a Partner in our
Miami office.
Anyone can become a victim of identity theft, and it can happen
anywhere. Michael Stores, Neiman Marcus and Target are simply the
latest merchants to report that customer information was stolen.
While being a victim of identity theft has many costs, it is hard
to imagine anyone paying a larger price than Carlos Gomez. As
the Miami Herald reported Gomez was arrested on
money laundering charges, spent two weeks in a Federal detention,
and another seven months under house arrest. It then took close to
a year for Federal prosecutors to acknowledge that they arrested
the wrong man.
On January 28, 2014, the IRS announced that it was starting a pilot program for taxpayers who live in
Florida, Georgia and the District of Columbia. In announcing the
program, the IRS indicated that it picked these jurisdictions
because these locations have "the highest per-capita
percentage of tax related identity theft."
