The IRS paid $5.2 billion in fraudulent tax refunds during the 2013 tax season while preventing another $24.2 billion from being paid, according to the U.S. Once thieves have a Social Security number, creating phony W-2s is not that hard, she said: “You can get everything you need from LinkedIn and Facebook.” Hackers are also targeting accounting and law firms to mine personal information, Litan said. Another 80 million customers and employees had their Social Security numbers and other private information exposed in the recent breach of health insurer Anthem Inc. Court Ventures, a public records aggregator now owned by Experian, unwittingly sold information to identity thieves from a database containing more than 200 million records that included Social Security numbers. “We know that these have been stolen and sold,” Litan said. Social Security numbers, answers to security challenge questions and other private information on millions of people is up for grabs. With all the recent database breaches and hacks, there are plenty of sources for all the information that thieves would need to create bogus tax returns and steal people’s refunds, Litan said. “Intuit has not been notified, nor are we aware, that we are the target of an FBI investigation,” Intuit spokeswoman Julie Miller said in an email to Reuters.
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