Identity thieves targeting tax returns

In one of the fastest growing forms of identity theft, crooks are using a stranger's Social Security number and other personal information to fool the Internal Revenue Service into diverting the person's rightful refund to the thieves' pockets, according to a Scripps Howard News Service investigation. The volume of tax- or wage-related identity theft complaints to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission more than tripled from 2005 to 2009 according to a Scripps analysis of more than 1.4 million ID theft records in the agency’s Consumer Sentinel database.  Scripps national reporter Isaac Wolf also found another emerging — and increasing — criminal enterprise: Thieves using a stranger's identity to start electric or gas service at the the thieves' address. In 2005, the agency recorded 8,427 complaints for utility identity theft. By 2009, that number more than doubled to 19,934. In its investigation, Scripps Howard News Service also pinpoints the national hot spots for identity theft and offers an interactive map of complaints by ZIP code.

A recently fired Milwaukee police officer under federal investigation after a woman said he raped her on duty in July has been accused of breaking the law five times before, according to department records obtained by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Gina Barton. Three of the previous allegations involved sexual misconduct — two with female prisoners and one with a 16-year-old girl. The incidents involving Ladmarald Cates date to 2000, three years after he was hired by the department, according to internal affairs documents and officials. Cates' record shows how a police officer can rack up serious misconduct allegations for more than a decade before facing significant consequences.

"Secure Communities, a federal immigration-enforcement program designed to identify and deport violent illegal immigrants, has increasingly targeted and deported undocumented immigrants with no criminal backgrounds," reports Thomas Francis of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. Nationally, 28 percent of the immigrants deported since the program began in 2008 have been "non-criminal" immigrants. In Florida, the rates are much higher.  Immigrant advocates have voiced concern that these numbers reflect racial profiling in some communities.

At least 135 attorneys with criminal convictions are practicing law in Wisconsin — including some who kept their licenses while serving time and others who got them back before they were off probation, an investigation by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters Cary Spivak and Ben Poston has found. The roster includes lawyers with felony or misdemeanor convictions for fraud, theft, battery and repeat drunken driving, as well as offenses involving political corruption, drugs and sex. Another 70 lawyers were charged with crimes but succeeded in having the charges reduced or avoided conviction by completing a deferred prosecution plan. The newspaper’s review, which ran nearly 24,000 Wisconsin lawyers against state and federal court records, found that lawyers who are convicted of crimes are then subjected to a slow-moving disciplinary system that operates largely behind closed doors.

A recent investigation in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, reveals that a British jihadist who was jailed in connection with Pearl's murder is "likely to be released" because of tainted evidence used by Pakistani officials. A group of American journalists collected the report that suggests Pakistani prosecutes used "concocted evidence" to prove the Briton was involved in the murder.

Former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Asra Q. Nomani, and Georgetown University Journalism Director Barbara Feinman Todd led a team of 32 students in investigating the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl that occurred in 2002. The three-year investigation, broken down into 11 parts, reveals new information and details about the 27 men who are linked to Pearl's death.

The work of reporter Stanley Nelson, of the Concordia (La.) Sentinel, has implicated a man in the unsolved 1964 civil rights murder of Frank Morris. Interviews with three people linked a Richland Parish truck driver to the arson that killed Morris. "The three people, all of them now or previously related to the truck driver, identified him as Arthur Leonard Spencer, 71, of Rayville. They say Spencer was part of a Klan hit squad assigned to ride into Ferriday to torch Morris' shoe shop during the early morning hours of Dec. 10, 1964."

As the number of deportations from county jails increases across the country and in central Ohio, local authorities are struggling to deal with the fallout, a year-long examination by the The Columbus Dispatch found. In a communication mixup, ICE agents deported a witness in a murder trial before he could testify. The accused, a US citizen, was freed. And immigrants facing serious criminal charges use deportation to avoid criminal prosecution. Once deported, those immigrants are free to plan their clandestine return to the country. All the while the costs to taxpayers to fund the broken immigration system mount.

Hobbled by Congress, federal watchdogs rarely revoke the licenses of lawbreaking gun dealers. And when they do, stores can easily beat the system by having a relative, friend or employee pull a fresh license - something that routinely happens across the country, a Journal Sentinel investigation by reporters John Diedrich and Ben Poston has found. The newspaper identified more than 50 stores in 20 states over the past six years where such a move was made, wiping the operation's slate clean. The newspaper's review, which involved contacting more than 150 gun dealers, uncovered 34 additional stores with indications a revoked license holder remains connected to a gun-dealing operation. The Journal Sentinel investigation also found that the ATF inspects less than 20% of the nation's roughly 62,000 federally licensed firearms dealers each year and tries to shut down just a fraction of them, with the number dramatically dropping in the past six years. And when the agency tries to take away a license, it succeeds just half the time.

The Washington Post's yearlong investigation documenting the way guns move through American society continues with an examination of the role U.S. gun dealers play in supplying Mexican drug cartels. The Post cracked the secrecy of the federal government's gun-trace database and obtained the names of the top U.S. stores with the most guns traced back from Mexican crime scenes. They also uncovered the stores that lead the U.S. in guns linked to crimes nationwide.