Date: December 15, 2021 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Miami, FL — Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) has appointed Matthew D. Line as executive special agent in charge of its Miami Field Office. In this role, SAC Line is responsible for planning, directing, and evaluating the activities of personnel who conduct criminal investigations into tax violations and financial crimes in the Southern Judicial District of Florida, and the Judicial Districts of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. The Southern Judicial District of Florida includes the counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, Monroe, Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River, Okeechobee, and Highlands. Prior to his selection, Line served as the special agent in charge of the Charlotte Field Office since 2018, where he oversaw IRS-CI's activities and operations in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. He began his career with IRS-CI in 2000 as a special agent in the Dallas Field Office, and later transitioned to the Miami Field Office, assigned to San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2008, he was promoted to the supervisory special agent position in the Los Angeles Field Office, and later in the Phoenix Field Office. In 2015, he was promoted to the assistant special agent in charge in the Newark Field Office, where he was responsible for operations for the state of New Jersey. Other positions he has held include senior analyst with IRS-CI's Review and Program Evaluation Section; Deputy Chief of Staff; and Acting Deputy Director for IRS-CI's Advanced Analytics and Innovation Section. Line has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with a concentration in accounting from the University of Nevada Reno. "I'm extremely proud to serve in this new capacity in a very vibrant region," said Line. "This is an amazing opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with some of our best criminal investigators and professional staff, whose top priority is to use their state-of-the-art investigative skills on behalf of our taxpayers." For Fiscal Year 2021, the Miami Field Office obtained an 89.4% conviction rate on its cases. Of the 113 criminal investigations initiated by the Miami Field Office, 80 were recommended for prosecution, and 38 cases have already been sentenced to an average of 26 months. Additionally, field office staff conducted seizures totaling approximately $50 million of illegal proceeds related to money laundering and other frauds. IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft, bank secrecy act violations, COVID-19 fraud, and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, boasting a nearly 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 11 attachés stationed abroad.
