offering free credit monitoring and new identification numbers to verify next year's return. joining me now with more nbc news, justice correspondent pete williams. this is so fascinating, pete, because it was just 2013 the irs paid out $5.8 billion in phony refunds, so we've known of a problem the agency has known but yet they're still vulnerable as our taxpayers. >> well, this is the biggest scam now going against the internal revenue service, has been for several years. this part of it involves something called your tax return transcript. you may not have realized you could get it, but it's basically a summary of your tax returns from previous years. if you go on the irs website right now and try to get your tax return transcript using the get transcript function, you'll see a little box right here. as you get close, you can read it. it says the on-line get transcript services currently unavailable. if you want your transcripts, you can get them by mail. we apologize for any