This is in the non-tax-related area of law:

I’m writing to tell you about – and invite you to come to – a free panel discussion (aka “Public Forum”) on a topic important to anyone who runs or wants to run a website or blog, and to lawyers who advise website owners or bloggers, or both.

A little more information: The forum is entitled:

“Click on the Dotted Line:

Internet Website Privacy Policies,

Terms of Use and Service, and Disclaimers –

Can all that stuff you never read actually hurt you?”

It’s taking place on Tuesday April 27, 2010 at 6 PM at New York County Lawyers’ Association (NYCLA), which is downtown, near City Hall, at 14 Vesey Street, New York, NY. NYCLA’s Cyberspace Law Committee is putting on this forum and I will be moderating it.

What’s it about? This forum will discuss the enforceability of website terms, good practices in developing those terms, as well as pitfalls for website owners, businesses, and their attorneys in identifying issues, developing policies, and drafting the “fine print” terms for websites.

Who will be speaking? There will be

• a director of and counsel to the consumer watchdog organization, the Better Business Bureau (BBB),
• a consultant to businesses for developing the policies which underlie website terms and policies,
• the general counsel to a large website doing substantial online commerce and social networking (a sort of facebook for artists, craftspeople, and their customers), and
• an Intellectual Property and Internet attorney who drafts terms and policies for websites and the businesses or entrepreneurs who own them. (See the list of speakers, below, and also see the flyer for this forum, which is attached, as a pdf file)
• plus, the forum will be moderated by me (appeals lawyer, tax lawyer, civil litigator, longtime member of the Cyberspace Law Committee’s executive committee)

Where and when is it taking place?

WHERE: New York County Lawyers Association

14 Vesey Street

New York, NY 10007

WHEN: Tuesday, April 27th, 2010, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

What does it cost? This Public Forum is FREE of charge and open to the public.

Do I need a ticket? No, you do not need a ticket. And it’s free of charge. You can just show up;

BUT, NYCLA does request that you RSVP by sending an email to dlamb@nycla.org with the phrase “April 27 forum” in the subject line

What are the names of the speakers and what’s their background?

Sarah Feingold, Esq. — General Counsel to Etsy.com, an online marketplace for hand-crafted items and artwork

Ester Horowitz — Privacy, Identity Theft and Fraud-Prevention Consultant

Brian Rauer, Esq. — Executive Director, Better Business Bureau (BBB), Mid-Hudson and Long Island regions and General Counsel, BBB Serving Metro New York

Natalie Sulimani, Esq. — Internet and Intellectual Property Attorney and Principal, Sulimani Law Firm

Moderator: Allan R. Pearlman, Esq. — Tax, Civil Litigation and Appeals Attorney and Author of http://LifeLawandTaxes.com

I hope you can come, and that if you have friends or colleagues who are interested in internet law and the legal issues surrounding running a website or blog, that they might come. Please forward this email and/or tell anyone you know who might be interested in this topic about this forum. Thanks.

Criminals who dress up as cops sometimes get a whole lot of crimes done. Similarly, internet email scamsters have been pretending to be the Internal Revenue Service for a while as well.

In this scam, a criminal sends an email which is supposed to look like it’s from the IRS. This fraudulent email asks you to click on a link to review your account, get a refund, or something, but the goal is actually to extract from your personal information, by which your identity can be stolen, or to commit some other nefarious crime which will only hurt you (like perhaps to take control of your computer and use it as a zombie bot which becomes an unwitting conduit for spam).

In any event, this sort of scam, often to accomplish identity theft has been on the IRS’s “Dirty Dozen” annual list of top tax scams for five years in a row … ever since 2006.

I just received one of these scam emails. it looks like this:

Taxpayer ID: arp-00000177112725US
Tax Type: INCOME TAX
Issue: Unreported/Underreported Income (Fraud Application)

Please review your tax statement on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website (click on the link below):

review tax statement for taxpayer id: arp-00000177112725US <http://www.irs.gov.foodyt.com.pl/fraud.applications/application/statement.php?email=[redacted]@[email-address-redacted].com&tid=arp-00000177112725US>
Internal Revenue Service

(Note that the email address shown in the quote above has been redacted].

The bottom line here is: don’t trust emails which claim to be from the IRS. The IRS does not communicate with taxpayers by email. An email which looks like its from the IRS is fake and nothing good can come from clicking on any link included in such an email.

For all the reasons there are to dislike and sometimes even distrust about the IRS and the way it behaves, it is on the right side of this issue. The IRS explains in its 2010 list of the “Dirty Dozen” tax scams that “phishing” is a serious problem and danger:

Phishing

Phishing is a tactic used by scam artists to trick unsuspecting victims into revealing personal or financial information online. IRS impersonation schemes flourish during the filing season and can take the form of e-mails, tweets or phony Web sites. Scammers may also use phones and faxes to reach their victims.

Scam artists will try to mislead consumers by telling them they are entitled to a tax refund from the IRS and that they must reveal personal information to claim it. Criminals use the information they get to steal the victim’s identity, access bank accounts, run up credit card charges or apply for loans in the victim’s name.

Taxpayers who receive suspicious e-mails claiming to come from the IRS should not open any attachments or click on any of the links in the e-mail. Suspicious e-mails claiming to be from the IRS or Web addresses that do not begin with http://www.irs.gov should be forwarded to the IRS mailbox: phishing@irs.gov.

Don’t believe and don’t fall for emails which claim to be from the IRS. They aren’t. And they only mean to do you harm.

A religious leader in Vancouver, Washington has a lot of atoning to do for his less-than-spiritual relationship to material things and the lure of filthy lucre.

Until last September, Maximo Garza, 47, was the pastor for Victory Outreach Church of Portland, a non-denominational church which has operated in Portland, Oregon, for more than 15 years. Garza was sentenced to five months in prison for aiding the preparation of a false tax return.

During his plea hearing, Garza admitted he provided false expense invoices which purported to reflect public relations and other services provided by Victory Outreach Church to William Thompson, who was then operating a mail-order divorce service using the name Hallwood Inc.

Thompson used the false invoices to take expense deductions on tax returns filed by Hallwood in order to fraudulently reduce his tax liability. Thompson pled guilty to tax evasion and was sentenced to a prison term in 2007.

Between 2001 and 2003, Garza provided invoices reflecting a total of $735,441 in false business expenses. Thompson agreed to let Garza keep approximately 10% of the expense amounts.

Where are those scarce government resources going?

The Internal Revenue Service employs approximately 88,000 full time staff. This is two and a half times as many as the FBI.

Then, what about Spies v. Bean counters? Incomparable! The number of the CIA’s staff cannot “at present, be publicly disclosed.”   So says cia.gov.

Marketing experts say that there are few words as powerful to persuade as “free.” One enterprising scamster took that concept and ran with it to steal unsuspecting taxpayers’ tax refunds.

While living in sunny San Diego, Maxim Maltsev of Russia, blended the persuasive power of the word “free” with the fact that the IRS has a free electronic tax return filing program, and harnessed the awesome reach of the Internet, to steal tax refunds owed to ordinary taxpayers, looking to get their returns prepared and filed as quickly, easily and cheaply as possible.

Maltsev admitted in federal court in California that he was part of a conspiracy to obtain federal income tax returns requesting refunds before they were electronically filed with the IRS.

The success of the scheme depended upon taxpayers being fooled into using apparently free electronic tax return filing services which were, in fact, fake.

This was possible at all because the IRS sponsors a program called “Free File,” which allows taxpayers who are “eligible” to prepare and electronically file federal tax returns for free. And, most taxpayers are eligible to take advantage of the Free File program.

For example, in 2006, the time period when Maltsev carried out his scam, approximately 70% of all taxpayers were eligible to use the Free File program. Also at that time, there were 19 Free File affiliate companies formally approved by the IRS.

These approved affiliates linked to the IRS’s official website, making possible the electronic filing, and facilitating taxpayers taking advantage of this program.

Maltsev and coconspirators (three friends of his) created websites which appeared to be Free File affiliates. The Maltsev crew then advertised their bogus sites on the Internet and through email. Taxpayers taken in by the scam filled out their income tax returns online on the websites of the fake services Maltsev & company created.

Before actually filing the tax returns with the IRS, Maltsev’s fake services changed the taxpayers’ banking information so that refunds would be sent to one of Maltsev’s own bank accounts instead of the bank account belonging to the actual taxpayer.

Maltsev’s scheme then actually filed the modified tax returns with the IRS by submitting them through the real Free File affiliate websites – those 19 affiliate companies which were actually approved by the IRS.

Ultimately, Maltsev’s scam took in more than 65 taxpayers and it redirected (i.e., stole) approximately $136,000.

In 2009, Matsev was indicted for his 2006 crime, one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. He pled guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison and ordered to repay $136,000 to the Internal Revenue Service.

The Associated Press reports that oral argument on Wesley Snipes’ appeal of his conviction on three misdemeanor charges of failure to file tax returns was heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in Atlanta today. See Wesley Snipes Appeals 3 Tax Convictions in Georgia. (http://sn.im/tc2fn)

The almost-overnight sensation of the IRS offshore account voluntary disclosure program is about to close.

After the deadline was extended three weeks ago, from September 23rd to October 15th (see http://lifelawandtaxes.com/irs-extends-voluntary-disclosure-deadline-for-secret-offshore-account/), the final deadline is now only days away. See also the New York Times article, “Tax Evaders Face Choice: Pay or Pray” by Lynn Browning.

While touting itself as a program by which taxpayers with unreported income in foreign bank accounts can “come in from the cold,”  avoid criminal prosecution, and pay a penalty which is stiff, but not as severe as the penalties a taxpayer would be subject to outside the program, what seems to get lost in the discussion of this program is the fact that taxpayers who seek to participate are required to confess to a tax crime, waive their 5th Amendment right against self incrimination before knowing whether the Government will commit not to pursue criminal charges against them.

That is a danger of this program. Still, news accounts plus telephone conversations with IRS employees working in its criminal investigation division report that thousands of taxpayers are lining up to participate, submitting written disclosures in order to get that promise not to prosecute and the stiff but less horrible than otherwise penalty structure.

With 48 hours left before the final deadline to participate in a voluntary disclosure program designed get taxpayers with unreported foreign bank accounts to come back into the system and report their foreign income, the IRS has announced that it is extending the deadline from Wednesday September 23, 2009 until October 15, 2009.

The IRS reports that this extension was made in response to repeated requests from attorneys and other tax practitioners from all over the country.

In addition, an IRS agent working on a team evaluating the disclosures being submitted by taxpayers trying to participate in this program told me that there was a huge volume of submissions.

Within the guidelines of this program, taxpayers are given an opportunity to avoid criminal prosecution for tax crimes such as tax evasion and tax fraud.

Also, as part of this program, a taxpayer is subject to paying penalties on previously unreported income in foreign bank accounts under guidelines defined earlier this year, in March 2009. These guidelines are tough and expensive, but not nearly as tough or expensive as the sort of penalties a taxpayer would be facing if not working within this program.

The Internal Revenue Service flatly states about its own practices: “The IRS does not send taxpayers e-mails about their tax accounts.”

So, if your email in-box has a message saying that its from “Internal Revenue Service [no-reply@irs.gov]” with a subject line of “Notice of Underreported Income” you  can know, from the start, that this message is a fake.

This message is apparently being sent to gazillions of email addresses.

The text of one I received today reads as follows:

Taxpayer ID: arp-0000174073547US

Tax Type: INCOME TAX

Issue: Unreported/Underreported Income (Fraud Application)

Please review your tax statement on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website (click on link below):

review tax statement for taxpayer id: arp-0000174073547US

Internal Revenue Service

This is plainly a fake, and a scam, probably designed to steal the recipient’s identity, or install malicious software on the recipient’s computer.

Steve Ragan of The Tech Herald (thetechherald.com) reports that this bogus message is being sent out at a rate approaching 90,000 an hour, and that the goal of it is, in fact, to trick computer users to install malicious software onto their computers.

So the quick thought here: don’t fall for it, don’t click on the link in this bogus email which is designed to do harm.

By now, as taxpayers, if we’ve ever had a scrape with the IRS or a state’s taxing agency, especially if we happen to be owing some, we are accustomed to getting letters, maybe getting phone calls, maybe even having some live person from the IRS show up at our door.

And we are familiar with the forms, and the questions: things like:

• Where do you work?
• Where do you bank?
• Do you rent or own your house or apartment?
• What is the rent?
• What is the mortgage?
• What is the maintenance or common charges?
• Do you own stocks or bonds?
• What are they worth?

All these questions, and more.

And, if you happen to get audited, the Revenue Agent (the IRS’s name for the person who does the audit) might send you a few pages of forms which ask you to provide specific information and documents to help answer these sorts of questions. The IRS calls them IDRs, which stands for “Information Document Request.”

If you don’t respond, and things get ugly, the IRS can drag you into court and have you explain to a judge why didn’t provide the information the IRS requested. You might have a good reason; you might not.

It’s all pretty low tech: letters, paper, phone calls, knocking on doors.

But according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, the Taxman is leaping quickly into the 21st Century and gathering information about taxpayers from Facebook walls, MySpace posts, chat rooms, and Google.

In “Is ‘Friending’ in Your Future? Better Pay Your Taxes First,” The Wall Street Journal’s Laura Saunders reports that state taxing authorities in Minnesota, Nebraska, and California have been catching long-time tax debtors and tax evaders who announce their professional and travel plans on social media sites. Other states are doing so as well, or at least thinking about it.

For example, one tenacious and inquiring tax collector found a delinquent taxpayer who was a “rigger of sails” by searching for his name and the phrase (“rigger…”). This search led him to a discussion board of local riggers, and in it, a discussion thread telling where this rigger went after his store closed.

With this morsel of information, the taxman located the missing “rigger of sails” and collected the unpaid tax debt.

While states are jumping into mine social media sites and more generally the internet, the IRS is playing its hand very close to the vest. It refused to comment on whether or how it might be using social networking sites.