Don't Mess With Taxes

The Internal Revenue Service's law enforcement arm is getting a new chief next month.

Guy Ficco, current Deputy Chief of Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), will take the reins from current IRS CI Chief James Lee on April 1. Lee, who took over as the tax agency's top law enforcement officer in October 2020, is retiring.

As head of IRS CI, Ficco will oversee a worldwide staff of more than 3,200 employees, including 2,200 special agents who investigate crimes involving tax, money laundering, public corruption, human trafficking, drug trafficking, cybercrime, and terrorism-financing.

Long-time IRS member: Ficco, pictured at left, is a 29-year IRS veteran.

Before becoming deputy IRS CI chief, Ficco served in leadership positions across the agency, ranging from supervisory special agent in the Washington, D.C., Field Office to executive director of Global Operations, Policy, and Support at CI headquarters.

Ficco holds a bachelor's degree in business administration, with a concentration in accounting from Dominican University in New York. He is also a certified fraud examiner.

"Guy has enjoyed a remarkable career as a CI special agent and leader who brings a wealth of experience to this job," said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel in announcing the IRS CI promotion.

"He is highly respected in the IRS and has spent his career building strong relationships with law enforcement agencies around the country," added the commissioner. "Guy's leadership is important during a pivotal period where the IRS is focusing on ensuring fairness in the tax system and renewing our enforcement work in key areas."

Continued tax criminal pursuit: Ficco said he is looking to expand on IRS CI's successes.

"Our CI team is uniquely positioned to combat not only tax crimes, but also the illicit movement of funds tied to drug and human trafficking, sanctions evasion and cybercrime. We are here to protect U.S. taxpayers from criminals who hold no regard for the victims or government coffers they drain," said Ficco.

IRS CI plays a unique role in the federal law enforcement community. Its special agents are the only federal law enforcement officers with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code.

IRS CI has 20 field offices across the United States, and 12 attaché posts abroad. The division has a nearly 90 percent federal conviction rate.

Tax Felon Friday: You can read about some of IRS CI's successes in my posts IRS investigators identify $37 billion in tax & financial crimes, IRS CI's top 10 tax crime cases of 2023, and Texas man charged in apparent first-ever criminal crypto capital gains tax case.

As you've probably already deduced, those items were prior Tax Felon Friday blog posts.

Since the tax agency's criminal investigative unit's exploits often make this list, it seemed only fitting that the announcement of IRS CI's new leader also get similar recognition.

If you want to catch up on all sorts of tax miscreants, the aforementioned special Tax Felon Friday page is a good place to start.

And if you want more tax crime posts, notably those that were published long before I gave them a special end-of-week feature, you can peruse, what else, the tax crimes category. You'll find this post at the top of that collection right now, so just scroll down for more.

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