Operation Number Games was Illegal

Larimer Judge throws out Operation Number Games

Sharon Dunn

A second judge has ruled that a search of a Greeley tax preparer’s records last October was illegal, taking the heat off more than 1,000 suspected illegal immigrants caught up in Operation Number Games.

Larimer District Court Judge James Hiatt put a stop to the identity theft investigation Monday, saying deputies from the Weld County Sheriff’s Office wrongly seized federal income tax records to pursue suspected illegal immigrants in the investigation. Hiatt ordered Weld District Attorney Ken Buck and Weld Sheriff John Cooke to return or destroy in the next seven days all evidence seized in the case.

“This is an important ruling for all of America,” said Reid Neureiter, an attorney with Jacobs, Chase, Frick, Kleinkopf and Kelly of Denver. He is working on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed for a preliminary injunction against Buck and Cooke.

“Tax records should be private, and just because you have a suspicion that someone filing taxes with a Hispanic tax preparer might be doing something wrong doesn’t give you license to seize 5,000 tax records and look for the needle in a haystack,” Neureiter said.

Buck and sheriff’s investigators based their search of Amalia’s Tax and Translation Service on one defendant who had been investigated for identity theft and said illegal immigrants throughout the community knew to file their taxes there. Deputies searched through 5,000 records and found evidence of roughly 1,330 suspected illegal immigrants filing returns with false or stolen Social Security numbers. The Internal Revenue Service requires everyone to file tax returns, regardless of citizenship. In cases where filers do not have a valid Social Security number, the IRS issues individual taxpayer identification numbers.

..The case has divided many in the community on the issue of illegal immigration and the rights of the victims of identity theft. The IRS’ policy of issuing special identification numbers to illegal immigrants points to the problems, Buck said.

“The federal government has turned a blind eye to illegal activity in this country, with its failure to enforce the law at the border, with its failure to enforce tax laws, and Social Security laws within this country,” Buck said...

What about the id theft victims now? The 1330 people who were having their social security numbers being used illegally. I guess only time will tell.

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