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WASHINGTON (AP) — An Internet connection and a bunch of stolen identities are all it takes for crooks to collect billions of dollars in bogus federal tax refunds. And the scam is proving too pervasive to stop. A government report in November said the IRS issued $4 billion in fraudulent tax refunds over the previous year to criminals who were using other people's personal information. Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that the "scale, scope and execution of these fraud schemes" has grown substantially and the Justice Department in the past year has charged 880 people. Who's involved? In a video message released ahead of the April 15 tax filing deadline, Holder said the scams "are carried out by a variety of actors, from greedy tax return prepares to identity brokers who profit from the sale of personal information to gangs and drug rings looking for easy access to cash." Even Holder isn't immune. Two men pleaded guil...

MAZATLAN, Mexico — Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, one of the world's biggest drug traffickers and Mexico's most-wanted fugitive, was captured Saturday in a joint U.S.-Mexican operation after more than a decade on the run, officials of both countries announced. Guzman was arrested by agents who burst into the seaside condominium in the Sinaloa resort of Mazatlan where he had moved just two days earlier. His capture was a huge symbolic blow to Mexican drug trafficking, a world in which he had reached folk hero status, and an important victory for the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto. How Guzman's removal will affect the drug trade is less clear. His Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's oldest, richest and most powerful marijuana and opium organization, has already expanded to more than 50 countries in the Americas, Europe and Africa, and is likely to continue without him. "This is the biggest blow to drug trafficking by the Mexican government in many, ...

MEXICO CITY — Just before 7 a.m. on Saturday, dozens of soldiers and police officers descended on a condominium tower in Mazatlán, Mexico, a beach resort known as much as a hangout for drug traffickers as for its seafood and surf. The forces were following yet another tip about the whereabouts of one of the world’s most wanted drug kingpins, Joaquín Guzmán Loera — known as El Chapo, which means “Shorty” — who had eluded such raids for 13 years since escaping from prison, by many accounts in a laundry cart. With an army of guards and lethally enforced loyalty, he reigned over a worldwide, multibillion-dollar drug empire that supplied much of the cocaine and marijuana to the United States despite a widespread, yearslong manhunt by American and Mexican forces.  This time, however, Mr. Guzmán, believed to be in his mid-50s, did not slip out a door, disappear into the famed mountains around his northwest Mexico home, or prove to be absent, as he had in so many previ...