IRS Criminal Investigation expects to hire more agents, pursue more cryptocurrency cases…

The Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation division identified $1.8 billion in tax fraud in 2019, with a 91.2 percent conviction rate for all financial crimes, according to the division’s 100th annual report released Thursday, which also highlighted a continued focus on employment tax, cryptocurrency and cybercrime.

This year’s report, which marked the agency’s 100th anniversary, continued a general downward trend of investigations and prosecutions for CI over the last few years. In a conference call with reporters, CI chief Don Fort attributed the trend to fewer special agents, as many retire and those who remain in service devote time to inheriting those cases and training new agents. Fort estimated that 130 to 150 agents retire every year, and that the time between onboarding new agents and completion of their first case averages two to three years.

The overall number of CI investigations initiated in 2019 was 2,485, down from 2,886 in 2018 and 3,019 in 2017….