In 2009, The Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigations Division (IRS-CI) developed a model for regional task forces. The initiative created the Suspicious Activity Report Review Team (SAR-RT) task force program. The task forces were designed to review FinCEN data for case generation within the task force, and to refer potential case leads to other law enforcement organizations within the particular region. The Phoenix, Arizona IRS-CI office formed the Suspicious Activity Border Related (SABR) task force under the SAR-RT initiative in 2010.
The SABR task force originated with the mission to analyze and assign case leads that are generated from Suspicious …show more content…
Due to IRS budget cuts, all areas within the CI division are under scrutiny, including the SABR task force. Low seizure numbers for the task force have brought an additional focus upon the task force to either improve within the context of investigations and seizures, or possibly face being disbanded. Additionally, the task force members have migrated to working as individuals rather than as a cohesive unit after significant revisions were made in IRS-CI investigations …show more content…
Palantir would allow for a custom search of FinCEN based on specific keywords, such as Bitcoin, black market peso exchange, money laundering, and other directed criteria (Greenberg, 2013). Adding date range and location criteria to the search allows for more succinct queries. The resulting report would provide a detailed list of FinCEN data that would provide workable investigative leads, in a digestible format, for the task force. Additionally, FinCEN reports which involve suspects or businesses that are named in the report would be provided without running a separate report (Greenberg,