FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 25, 2002 The Department of Justice and The United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California today asked a federal court in San Francisco to approve its service of a John Doe summons on VISA International. "John Doe" summonses permit the IRS to obtain information about people whose identities are unknown. The information expected in response to the summons will help the IRS identify people who use offshore accounts to evade their United States income tax liabilities. There are VISA- sponsored credit, charge or debit cards issued by banks in more than 30 countries, including Switzerland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Bermuda and numerous Caribbean nations.
Also today, in a federal court in Miami, The Department of Justice filed papers reflecting American Express's agreement to turn over records relating to people who may be subject to United States income taxes and who have credit card accounts with addresses in Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas or the Cayman Islands. MasterCard has already produced over 1.7 million records, involving over 230,000 accounts, in response to a John Doe summons, According to the IRS, that information will be used in civil audits and criminal investigations. If the MasterCard information is representative of the industry, there could be 1 to 2 million U.S. citizens with debit/credit cards issued by offshore banks. This compares with only 170,000 Reports of Foreign Bank & Financial Accounts (FBARS) being filed in 2000 and only 117,000 individual 1040 filers indicating they had offshore bank accounts (tax year 1999). Full press release: http://cryptome.org/doj-doe-cards.htm
