The new head of the IRS Criminal Investigation Department, Guy Ficco, outlines his vision and hiring plans

At the beginning of the year, the IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) got a new boss: Guy Ficco.

Ficco is no stranger to the organization. He previously served as deputy chief. He was appointed to the post in 2022 after replacing Jim Robnett, who retired after 36 years of service to the IRS. Prior to his appointment as deputy chief, Ficco served as executive director of global operations policy and support at CI.

Ficco joined the IRS in July 1995, fresh out of college at Dominican University of New York, where he earned a degree in business administration with a minor in accounting.

He worked in a student co-op or possibly in the Manhattan District’s New York field office, and became a special agent shortly after graduating. At the time, it was something of a family business – his older sister was a customs agent at the time. “I learned from her,” he says.

Furthermore, he points out that the IRS was a very good fit for his skills.

New York would be Ficco’s home for the next decade. He worked on several cases, including white-collar crimes in the city, drug offenses, and the KPMG tax fraud scandal. (KPMG LLP admitted criminal violations and agreed to pay $456 million in fines, restitution, and penalties as part of an agreement to defer prosecution of the firm — the firm admitted it had committed a fraud that caused at least $11 billion in false tax losses, costing the U.S. at least $2.5 billion in evaded taxes, according to court records.)

Ficco served in a variety of roles, including Special Agent in Charge and Assistant Special Agent in Charge in Washington, D.C. He eventually transferred to the Philadelphia Field Office, where he served as Special Agent in Charge (SAC), the highest-ranking criminal investigator in the region.

As part of his duties, Ficco spent a year leading the agency’s national undercover program. In CI, the undercover program allows an investigator to assume a covert identity to obtain evidence or information about the criminal activity being investigated. It is a limited tool used only when other investigative techniques fail to obtain information. According to the agency, undercover operations are used in less than 5% of cases — these are typically investigations into illegal activities such as drug trafficking, money laundering, fraudulent tax filing, tax refund fraud and the skimming of business profits.

Ficco also served for about a year as deputy director of CI’s CIA Strategy Division, which was primarily responsible for the organization’s people (hiring, etc.).

It seems like he’s done it all. That’s been an advantage, he says, especially in assessing risks and developing strategies for what comes next. The logical next step, it seems, would have been for him to become deputy head of CI in 2022 and eventually head of the agency.

As chief, Ficco now oversees a worldwide staff of about 3,350 employees, including 2,250 special agents. He says hiring is still a challenge. To give you an idea of ​​how things have changed because of the funding cuts, when Ficco started at the IRS in 1995, CI had about 3,500 special agents and nearly 5,000 employees.

His experience as a supervisor has given him a critical perspective on employees, including the importance of mental health. It’s always a concern in the workplace, but after the pandemic, making sure people were supported and empowered was critical. It’s not enough to talk about programs. Employees, he says, should be able to articulate, “I need help now.”

CI is actively hiring new employees – thanks in part to Anti-Inflation Act money – but a combination of turnover and hiring freezes over the past few years means many of the field agents are new. That’s “incredibly exciting and terrifying at the same time,” Ficco says. He says they’ve had to be creative to make it work, including rehiring former agents as contract workers to fill gaps, including as de facto trainers and mentors.

Ficco notes that the IRS has “never been particularly popular.” But, he says, misrepresentations of the IRS, including CI, and its work – those stories about the 87,000 armed agents – have added to less-than-favorable feelings about the agency. That’s something they’ve had to work on through outreach and recruitment among the population, especially at colleges and universities. The best way to get their message across, he says, is to “just keep doing our job and representing the American people.”

The funding – some of it comes from the Asset Forfeiture Fund, a fund of assets seized in criminal activity now managed by the Justice Department – has also helped CI innovate with new technologies, which, he says, will allow the agency to move forward.

Why is this important? Enforcement is critical to ensuring our tax system works smoothly.

“The United States has a voluntary tax system,” says Ficco, “and that only works if everyone meets the same requirements.”

“I’ll explain it to you like this,” he says, giving an example. If the speed limit on the highway is 60 miles per hour, he says, most drivers will drive 60 miles per hour, but some will drive 100 miles per hour. When highway patrol pull over those who are speeding, “the other drivers see that there is a responsibility.” Importantly, he adds, “if you drive properly, you are not the target.”

Who’s not playing by the rules? CI is currently focusing its resources on fighting money laundering, bank secrecy violations, identity theft and cybercrime. The agency is also scrutinizing wealthy taxpayers and those who otherwise don’t play by the rules. Federal income tax violations, he notes, are CI’s “daily bread and butter.”

Recently, they have also become more focused on stopping scams, including improper claims for employee retention credits (ERCs). Putting an end to these schemes is something close to Ficco’s heart – unfortunately, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has opened up additional opportunities for scammers to devise schemes to defraud people.

That, he explains, is CI’s job – fighting crime, protecting taxpayers and preserving the integrity of the tax system. That mission is as important as any other. But the good things are sometimes overlooked – an oversight the agency is now seeking to correct. Ficco stresses that CI wants to promote the agency’s work more, citing LinkedIn as an example of how they share their stories. He also singled out Justin Cole as instrumental in that work – Ficco says Cole has built out the media department and social media.

You can hear how passionate Ficco is about the agency—it has been his life’s work for 29 years. Today, CI is the sixth-largest law enforcement agency in the U.S. and the criminal investigation arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting investigations into financial crimes such as tax fraud, drug trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, health care fraud, and identity theft. While other federal agencies are also responsible for investigating money laundering and some bank secrecy violations, the IRS is the only federal agency that can investigate possible criminal violations of tax law.

The agency has 20 field offices throughout the United States and 12 attaché posts abroad.

You can find IRS CI on X (formerly known as Twitter) and LinkedIn.

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