More Waste in Government

It's enough to make you sick.

Investigators say the Internal Revenue Service may have delivered more than $5 billion in refund checks to identity thieves who filed fraudulent tax returns for 2011.They estimate that another $21 billion could make its way to ID thieves’ pockets over the next five years.

Thieves accomplish this trick by assuming the identity of a dead person, child or someone else who normally wouldn’t file a tax return.

For example, the IRS sent more than $3.3 million in refunds to an address in Lansing, Michigan, that was listed on 2,137 separate tax returns. And in at least 10 other cases, the IRS sent more than 300 direct deposits of refunds totaling more than $470,000 to the same bank account.