As Expected, Weld County DA Appeals Illegal Immigrant ID Theft Case
Weld County DA Ken Buck
Many of you may have seen our ongoing coverage of the Weld County, Colorado ID theft case that was thrown out by a judge last week for lack of “probable cause.” In an odd twist, that same judge announced his retirement the day after the controversial ruling.
So, the story continues. As expected, Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck is asking the Colorado Court of Appeals to overturn a judge’s decision that stopped his investigation of identity theft involving illegal immigrants. As you may recall, the case was thrown out because the DA had a local tax preparer’s office raided to find the critical information needed to bust more than 100 illegal immigrants.
We were not surprised to hear that the DA filed an appeal. We want to know what you think about this ongoing story. Of course, there is a much larger issue at hand – illegal immigration.
.gif)
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter
Some years ago, the social security administration studied what social security #s were being used by people working at the Pentagon and other critical infrastructures. To some people’s surprise, they found the same #s being used on many different people in different places, illegal aliens working at places like nuclear power plants, and several dead people on the Pentagon’s payroll.
This led to tracking down the particular people who were using those social security #s.
In one case they found someone who was not dead. Someone else had reported him dead, to fraudulently collect death benefits. There was logical explanations for all of it. The investigation turned up all sorts of leads to improper behavior, than needed fixing. I think this kind of audit ought to be done regularly, since more crooks are likely to conduct the same kind of behavior that other crooks have done in the past.
Some years ago, the state of Colorado sorted social security #s used in the reporting of payroll taxes, and found to some people’s surprise that as many as 100 people were using the same social security #. Well obviously no more than 1 of those people was eligible to use that #, and that 1 person might have 2-3 jobs at a time. But it is reasonable to suppose that the vast majority of the people involved in the many many cases of the same # used for up to about 100 users, were in fact using the # improperly.
What is the logical thing to do here?
State of CO share its findings with ICE (US dept concerned with illegal immigrants identification and removal), then conduct a series of joint raids on work places where the social security #s involved, asking those persons to show satisfactory identification. There may be human error in the human resources or payroll dept of the company.
What else are those social security #s being used for?
The true owner of each # has a hell of a job with income taxes …. the money reported that they earned is 100 times what they really earned, so they in trouble with the IRS for allegedly being untruthful on their tax returns.
I think that a local DA raid on a tax preparer office is off the wall. It would be quite reasonable for the tax preparer office to seek a court injunction to put a stop to such a DA’s actions.
I do not know about CO, but where I live and work, I pay payroll taxes to:
the federal government;
the state government;
the local government.
If the DA in my area wanted to find out where the same social security # was being used on multiple tax preparers, it could just raid the local government offices that have all that info, or raid the state government offices, that have all that info for the entire state.
Or maybe the local government treasurer would be willing to share the info with the DA without a subpoena, or other involvement by a judge.