Your identity could be the new crack cocaine.

So valuable is your name, birthday and social security number, that collective information is being sold on the streets, just like illegal drugs.  It's a cash crop, a hot commodity, sold by suppliers to users for big profit.

And right there is the headline for what may well be South Florida's biggest current crime wave.

Before you stop reading because you're convinced it can't happen to you, know that it can.  Maybe it already has. 

Just ask the hundreds of people in line at the Internal Revenue Service building in Miami last week.  That was the first sign we were onto something.  Victim after victim after victim described filing their yearly tax returns only to find out someone else already had, and had collected their tax refunds.

The numbers defied reporter logic.  How could this happen to so many people so easily?  What did law enforcement know?  That's what we set out to learn during the last week, and what we learned stunned the newsroom.  And believe me, we are a tough bunch to stun.

First, the crime.  You may already know how easy it is to file your tax return on one of those internet programs or in a quickie tax return office?  You don't even need a W-2.  The easy method is meant to speed the process, get you your money quicker.  All you need is your name, birthday and social security number, and the refund is offered at any address you enter or even as a download on a cash card.

Now imagine someone with a laptop and a list of identifying information sitting at a desk and filing tax return after return after return.  Maybe they download your refund on a cash card.  Maybe they have it sent to some abandoned home where they drive by and check the mailbox every day.   You're starting to get the picture.

And where do they get that reams of identifying information?  That's where the drug trade parallels come in.

The suppliers may be smash-and-grabbers who snatch purses and break into cars or mailboxes looking for your identifying information to sell.  More insidiously, they may be people with legitimate jobs and positions of trust in banks, social security offices, doctors offices, and other such places where they have access to your personal information.  We've seen several cases of just that kind of breach this week.   They print out the lists and take them to the streets, to the users.  They get paid a good amount for their contraband and they walk away. 

They've supplied the drugs for the users. 

But wait, there's more.  Once the criminals use your information to steal your tax refund, they may then sell your information again.  More profit for them, and another criminal who buys it can scam your tax refund next year. 

An investigative source of mine observed that the worst of this identity theft seems to take place in the Miami-to-Tampa region, coincidentally the same route cartels import and distribute narcotics.  Or maybe not so coincidentally.  Wifredo Ferrer, the United States Attorney for Florida's Southern Region told me this week, the criminals once employed in the drug trade, who might be shooting it out over drug territories, are turning to identity theft because it's a cleaner, safer and more private crime.  And just as profitable.

That means, these are no braintrusts here, no Rhodes scholars.  Two-bit street thugs are pulling off cyber heists with your stolen identity.

I'm thinking, what if the IRS refused to send your refund anywhere other than the address on your W-2 form?  Might that curtail the payoff, and so the crime?

We'll be staying on this, looking for answers. 

Meanwhile, have you filed your tax return?  Maybe you should go and check.