The ACLU has sued Weld County authorities, claiming they violated the privacy of thousands of people by seizing files from a tax service during an identity-theft crackdown.
The Weld County Sheriff’s Office took 4,900 tax files from Amalia’s Translation and Tax Service in Greeley in October.
Investigators said the tax service was known among illegal immigrants as a place to go to file for tax refunds.
“The search violated the privacy rights of thousands of innocent taxpayers who are not suspected of any wrongdoing,” Mark Silverstein, legal director for the Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a release. “If the sheriff and the district attorney can comb through all the many thousands of records of a tax preparer on the theory that some of the clients are doing something wrong, then none of our private information is safe.”
Weld County Sheriff John Cooke and 19th Judicial District Attorney Ken Buck are named in the suit, filed Monday in district court.
Buck said confidential tax information gathered by the Sheriff’s Office will be kept secret. “We will be very careful not to disclose confidential information to others.
“We suspect that 1,300 illegal immigrants are committing ID theft and criminal impersonation, and we will continue to work the case,” Buck said.
Cooke called the lawsuit “frivolous and ridiculous. We had information that people were committing crimes, and we got a search warrant and went and got them.”
Thirty-nine arrests have been made in the case so far, and more than 70 warrants remain outstanding.
Authorities raided Amalia’s after one illegal immigrant told them that he went to the tax service and notified the provider he had a fake Social Security number and name. He said the tax service prepared his taxes for several years as he worked for different U.S. agricultural companies. Amalia’s did so by getting an IRS individual taxpayer identification number from the agency and using that, instead of the Social Security number, to file the return.
Amalia Cerrillo, owner of the tax service, is not suspected of wrongdoing. “She hasn’t done anything illegal. Everything she is doing is according to what the IRS informs me is legal,” said Weld County Detective Josh Noonan, who is investigating the case.
“They know about it, and it is up to them to enforce their own tax code and what is proper and what is not,” said Weld DA spokeswoman Jennifer Finch.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
