The law enforcement arm of the IRS has launched a new program to ensure financial institutions receive “quantifiable results” on how the agency uses suspicious activity reports to investigate federal crimes.
As part of the CI-FIRST initiative, IRS Criminal Investigation headquarters will work with larger financial institutions with a national and international presence, and field office personnel will work with regional and community banks and credit unions in their respective areas of responsibility, according to an agency statement. IRS-CI will also streamline subpoena requests and share pointers with financial institutions on what to include in SARs to maximize effectiveness.
IRS-CI also released figures on how it uses Bank Secrecy Act data. More than 87% of the criminal investigations recommended for prosecution by IRS-CI from fiscal years 2022 to 2024 had a primary subject with a related BSA filing, with adjudicated cases resulting in a 97.3% conviction rate. Defendants received an average prison sentence of 37 months. IRS-CI used the data to identify $21.1 billion in fraud tied to tax and financial crimes, seize $8.2 billion in assets tied to criminal activity and obtain $1.4 billion in restitution for crime victims. Nearly 1,600 cases IRS-CI opened last year has at least one currency transaction report on the primary subject. More than 67% of cases opened by IRS-CI had a subject with one or more CTRs below $40,000, with 50% of CTRs involving amounts less than $22,230.
IRS-CI added that since 2020, it has used BSA data to initiate nearly 1,300 investigations with ties to fentanyl and investigate alleged employee retention credit fraud totaling $5.5 billion.
