What are some of the tactics that the government uses in an IRS criminal investigation? Well, number one, secrecy. Government agents don’t like to shine a light on their investigations. They don’t like to reveal details in their investigations. They don’t like you to even know that they’re there until it’s too late. A lot of times what we see in criminal investigation situations is by the time you become aware of the agent, the agent has already built a tremendous case against you or against people that you may know, whether you’re a subject or a target or simply a person of interest. So that’s one of the tools that they use. They use secrecy and they use time to build these cases up. The other things that they can do are they can get access to documents, they can get access to financial records. They can execute search warrants. They can do a variety of things to build tools. Oftentimes they’ll interview third party witnesses, and they’ll do so before speaking to the target or subject in question. Because what they’re doing is they’re trying to gather evidence. They’re trying to build a case. So about the time they come to interview a or a subject of investigation, they have all this information, they have all their case built up, and they’re trying to trap that person into a story or trap that person into a lie. Those are the most common techniques we see with criminal investigations. And obviously, the facts in every case are different, some of the methods that they use in every case are different, but those are what we routinely see.
We see government agents spend a lot of time working on these cases, developing these cases in order to secure their convictions, and then using that tool, that time, and those resources, the infinite power and resources of the U .S. government to move forward against the taxpayer. That’s why it’s very important when you think you’re the subject of a criminal investigation, get criminal tax counsel involved as soon as possible so that you can start throwing roadblocks in the way of that investigation and ultimately work on securing your innocence.