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So if you’re watching this video and you believe that you’re being investigated criminally by the IRS, you probably have a good sense of why you’re being investigated and depending on how certain you are of this, you need to stop right now. You need to call an attorney and you need to retain a criminal tax attorney to help you. The reason for that is criminal investigations are multi-year investigations. They’re very focused, they’re very detail-oriented and the criminal agents that work these cases put in a lot of time. Often when the subject of these investigations or the target of these investigations become aware that a criminal agent is looking into their conduct, it’s already too late because the government is very far along on the case. They’ve started either contacting third party witnesses, they’ve contacted the subject or target directly, or they’ve taken other action to make their presence known. They don’t make their presence known unless they’re pretty far along in their case. In the beginning they go knock on somebody’s door, but know they’re working behind the scenes. They’re looking at tax returns that were filed, they’re looking at other source documents, they’re looking at information, they’re pulling bank records and they’re building a case. Only after they’ve built that case and they’re certain or fairly certain that they’re going to attain a conviction do they go out in the field and start collaborating. So by the time you become aware that a criminal agent is on to you they may be very very far along or you may be almost the point

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So there are two answers to this question. Number one is “What does the IRS criminal investigation process look like from the IRS site?” and number two “What does it look like?” So from the IRS side of things, the criminal investigation process begins with a referral. The IRS doesn’t just sit in their office and pick people at random to initiate criminal investigations. What usually happens is a referral will come into the criminal investigative unit either through an audit or through a collections officer or through a whistleblower or through some other third party government investigation. So CI will take that lead and they’ll examine the information that’s being presented in the referral and then decide whether they want to devote investigative resources to looking at that case or not. If they do decide that they want to devote investigative resources then CI invokes on a fact-finding mission. So CID cases take many years to build in a lot of cases and so what they’re doing is they’re constantly looking for information. They’re trying to develop a case and the goal is when CI puts a case in the hands of a United States attorney, that US attorney has every tool they need in order to secure a conviction. So CI agents take their time. They’re very meticulous, they’re very careful and it’s only after they take great care and caution that they let their investigation be known to the public or to the subject or target of that investigation. The client may or may not be aware that CI is involved.

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