Everything about what they did was not well thought out. The way to do this scam with far less risk is with a stolen identity. They had the fraudulent refunds deposed into their own personal accounts and even tried to take the money and run after they knew for a fact the IRS had already caught them.
That said on $100mil of claims, the IRS only paid out 2.4% of that. At that rate, a $1mil claim nets you only $24K. I don't think I would fuck with the IRS for any amount of money (easier ways to steal I think) but for the risk a $2.4mil payout sounds a lot more plausible of a motivation than $24K does.
The question is whether the 2.4% was smooth across all filings, or whether it was 100% of the first million, 50% of the next million, etc as the computer system flagged things as unusual.
Possible. Tax agencies open up random investigations, as well, all the time. They can open an investigation 5-10 years back, depending on type of return, country, etc.
There's a chance they could've had such a random investigation and been caught. There's also a chance no investigation would be opened and they could've gotten away with it. I don't know why they pushed it so hard, though. At that point you're begging for a targeted investigation.
Unless they've already found something suspicious, in which case for certain things they can go back forever to rack up the criminal charges.
That's part of why it's important to destroy documents when you are legally able to. If you keep those documents longer, they are a risk to you in case of a "every tax return ever" investigation. If all evidence has gone, as you were legally allowed to do, there is very little chance they'll convict you for that stuff.
Even if you aren't a criminal, some innocuous things you do today might become illegal in the future as tax law is refined through case law.
Are you suggesting that things that are legal now, subsequently deemed illegal in the future, could then be retroactively brought against you? That sounds... incorrect.
He's not saying the law will change retroactively. Just that future interpretation of tax law via case law could change what was previously thought to be legal.
