The agency entrusted with some of our most personal financial data has admitted that a hacker or a group of hackers stole personal information, and the worst may be yet to come.
Thieves have already claimed the refunds of 15,000 people from the Internal Revenue Service and could very well use the rest of the data to apply for refunds in the names of tens of thousands of unsuspecting tax payers.
In a statement, the IRS admits "it's possible that some of these transcript accesses were made with an eye toward using them for identity theft for next year's tax season."
The IRS says the hack happened through a website called Get Transcript that was supposed to be secure, but has now been shut down.
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“They're pretty sure this is a very sophisticated operation. Because in order to get in, they had to already have a lot of personal information about these taxpayers. They had to have social security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and your tax filing status," said Stephen Ohlemacher, with the Associated Press, "On The Record" and Fox News Channel.
The IRS says it will be notifying the more than 100,000 taxpayers whose information was stolen and offer free credit monitoring.
But, the extent of the damage may not be known for months.
If you're wondering how big of a deal this is, the IRS estimates that in 2013 alone, they may have paid out $5.8 billion to identity thieves.
WJAX
