And when officers made traffic stops, they began noticing something odd.
They were finding "massive amounts" of preloaded debit cards, along with ledgers and laptop computers, said Sgt. Terry Goff in an exclusive interview with The Tampa Tribune and News Channel 8.
They soon uncovered what Goff said was an explosion of tax fraud that permeated the city's poorest neighborhoods and some of its most influential conclaves. Erstwhile street criminals were now using laptops and mailboxes to steal hundreds of millions of dollars by filing fraudulent tax returns with stolen Social Security numbers.
Investigators believe Tampa is at the tip of a national trend that has created a hemorrhage of federal tax dollars. In a six-month period, Postal Inspector Doug Smith said his agents seized an estimated $100 million in fraudulent tax refunds destined for local mailboxes. And Police Chief Jane Castor said she thinks that number represents less than 10 percent of the total fraud.
If Castor's estimate is close, the total fraud in the Tampa area alone could approach $1 billion.
Suddenly, the quick money to be earned selling drugs on street corners didn't have the same allure. It was easier, safer and more private to steal other people's identities and then use the Internet to con the Internal Revenue Service to deliver riches right to their mailboxes.
For at least a two-month period, the crooks even gave classes in Ybor City, renting out a social club every week to teach groups of 50 to 100 people how to "make it rain" money courtesy of Uncle Sam.Students learn how to use easily accessible Internet databases of Social Security numbers of deceased people, as well as personal information stolen by employees from business customer files.
In exchange for the lessons, the teachers expected a percentage of the loot, Goff said.
Castor said the criminals also threw filing parties where people got together to file fraudulent tax returns with incentives to get the returns filed by certain deadlines.
The fraud is being done by virtually "anybody and everybody that can get their hands on a computer," said Det. Sal Augeri, who compared the prevalence of the fraud to the crack epidemic of the 1980s. "It's just rock cocaine on a plastic card," he said. "Once you do it, it's addictive. It's so easy to do that some of these people I don't think could stop if they wanted to."
Investigators say the thieves appropriated the name of a popular tax filing program, dubbing the fraud "Turbo Tax." And it's even being celebrated in locally made rap videos posted on the Internet featuring flashy cars, wads of cash and laptop computers.
A spokeswoman for Turbo Tax, the corporation, said she could not discuss the ongoing investigation. "The safety and security of our customers' information is a top priority for TurboTax and we cooperate fully with law enforcement in any way we can, when these cases are brought to our attention," said Colleen Gatlin.
The reason Tampa appears to be ahead of the rest of the country "is a mystery to us," Goff said, although he and Castor suggested it may just be that police here have just identified it first. Tampa police have formed a task force with several other agencies, including the Hillsborough County Sheriffs Office, Postal Inspectors, the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Secret Service, to tackle the issue.
This week, investigators began a sweep of arrests and raids aimed at shutting down at least a portion of the fraud while sending a message to the crooks. They plan to announce the results of their offensive at a news conference Friday.
"We feel that we have caught up with the people committing this crime," Goff said. "And for those that think that nothing's ever going to happen to them, that's going to end this week."
On Thursday about 17 people were arrested, and five businesses, including at least two car dealers, were searched as part of "Operation Cash Back." Investigators seized numerous high-end cars, including a Bentley, at least two Jaguars, two souped-up Corvettes and a Mercedes.
The cars, Goff said, are a symptom of the sheer amount of cash that has flowed onto the streets through this kind of fraud. "When you can go and you can buy a $100,000 car with cash, that's pretty phenomenal to me," he said.
As word of the police crackdown filtered through the streets, detectives said they were hearing reports of people smashing laptop computers and throwing them in dumpsters.
Until now, cops say, word on the street was police couldn't do anything about the fraud.
And for a time, the biggest obstacle investigators say they confronted, ironically, was federal tax law.
That's because privacy restrictions prevent law enforcement from gaining access to tax returns. So even if someone is caught with hundreds of debit cards loaded with fraudulent tax refunds, investigators are not allowed to see the tax returns that were filed to obtain that money.
"The federal law's so restrictive, [the Internal Revenue Service is] unable to give local law enforcement any assistance," Castor said. Detectives, she added, had to find "a way around the IRS restrictions to investigate these cases."
The chief said, the obstacles are so great, none of the suspects arrested this week were charged with tax fraud, even though, "That's what they're doing."
Instead, she said, authorities are bringing charges of identity theft and money laundering.
At the same time, minimal or nonexistent screening of electronically filed tax returns, investigators said, makes it all too easy to commit this kind of fraud.
The explosion in fraud has afforded criminals extravagant spending sprees, according to Goff, who said detectives have seen people spend $15,000 or $20,000 at a time at the Gucci store in the International Plaza mall.
Among the searches conducted Thursday was an operation at a single-story home on Caracas Street. Among those inside, police said, was Marterrance Q. Holloway, 32, a suspected drug dealer.
Holloway was arrested a year ago at the Howard Johnson Hotel on North 50th St., according to police. When officers entered his room, they smelled marijuana and saw drugs. After Holloway and several other suspects were removed from the hotel, officers found four laptop computers they say were being used to file fraudulent tax returns.
There were also lists of personal information with more than 1,000 names, as well as debit cards and financial records. But Holloway ultimately faced only drug charges in that arrest, as police struggled with the legal barriers to bringing tax fraud cases.
Goff said the path the task force has mapped out can be used as a template by law enforcement agencies around the country. He said investigators here are eager to share what they've learned.
While street level crime decreased for a time when some drug dealers took to their computers, police later saw an increase in home invasion robberies and carjackings when word went out about the amount of money some people were making through fraud. This time, Goff said, the fraud perpetrators were the victims.
Even before this week's sweep, investigators have been arresting and prosecuting people for participating in the tax scam, including one member of a notorious local family, Shawntrece Sims.
Sims, 31, pleaded guilty in March to federal crimes involving more than $200,000 in tax fraud. After agreeing to cooperate with investigators, she was allowed to remain free while awaiting her sentencing hearing. But a judge revoked her bond on Aug. 11 after the prosecution presented evidence that she continued the tax fraud even after pleading guilty. After she signed her plea agreement, she stole an additional $409,000, according to government court pleadings.
While free on bond, Sims used cash to pay a fertility clinic to undo her tubal ligation to enable her to become pregnant before her sentencing hearing, the prosecution says.
Sims tried to hide her fraud from investigators by committing the fraud partly using Internet service at a hotel that employs her half sister, Tiffany McKinney, according to the court pleadings. McKinney was released last year from state prison where she was serving a sentence for manslaughter.
Their brother, Sedrick McKinney, was notorious in the late 1980s, when he became a symbol of revolving door justice after serving only four months of a nine-year prison term for shooting and paralyzing a baby during a street-corner drug deal. He later was sent to federal prison on a weapons offense after shooting a man in the face. He has since been released from federal prison.
But unlike murder and robbery and other street crimes, Goff said, people who commit tax fraud think they aren't hurting anyone.
In his 29 years with the Tampa Police Department, Goff said, he has never seen a crime that people so readily admit to committing. "When we call the people in and we put them in front of us and we interview them, the vast majority – I'm talking about over 90 percent – openly admit it," he said. "They don't see anything wrong with it in their mind."
Goff said the perpetrators think they're not hurting anyone. "They're not out robbing people in their mind," he said. "They're not putting a gun in your face; they're not breaking into your house. They're sitting in their living room on a computer and in their minds, they're doing - the vast majority of them are saying they're doing nothing wrong."
But while those whose identities were stolen have to contend with the fallout, there's also the loss to the American public.
"As a taxpayer," Augeri said, "I feel like I've had my money stolen day in and day out."
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