Nearly 400,000 Americans are unknowingly the victims of identity theft, in cases where perpetrators steal their identity to gain employment, because the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has yet to notify them, a federal audit reveals.

A report released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration details 133,864 cases where American children had their identities stolen by perpetrators trying to gain employment, but the parents of those children were never notified by the IRS.

The IRS did not issue its Employment-Related Identity Theft notice to the parents or legal guardians of 133,864 dependents that the IRS identified as employment identity theft victims in Processing Year 2019.

Finally, the IRS’s policy to notify repeat victims of employment identity theft every three years may result in many victims not being notified that identity thieves continued to use the victims’ Taxpayer Identification Numbers nearly every year to work.

The 75,451 victims that the IRS first notified in Processing Year 2017 were not sent a subsequent notice despite identity thieves using the victims’ Taxpayer Identification Numbers again to gain employment in Processing Years 2018, 2019, or both years.

Of those cases, nearly 393,000 victims were not notified by the IRS, including the more than 133,000 children whose parents remain unaware of their child’s stolen identity.