IRS Criminal Investigation press releases rank in Google for the names of the people involved in them, and they stay there. The IRS will not remove them. Google will not remove them. If one is appearing when people search your name, the path forward is suppression. That means building enough strong, authoritative content about yourself that Google has better options to show people than a press release about an IRS case.
For most people dealing with IRS press releases, suppression is achievable. It takes time, and it takes the right approach. Here is what you need to know.
What IRS criminal investigation press releases cover
The IRS Criminal Investigation division handles tax fraud, tax evasion, failure to file, money laundering, and related financial crimes. When CI makes an arrest, secures a guilty plea, or obtains a conviction, the IRS Media and Publications unit typically issues a press release. These releases are published on irs.gov under the Criminal Investigation section.
The press releases describe the alleged conduct in specific terms. They mention dollar amounts, years of non-payment, and the nature of the scheme. The language is direct and the framing is adverse. That is the nature of criminal enforcement communication. For the people named in these releases, the resulting search result is often the single most damaging thing that appears when someone searches their name.
The IRS press release and the full story
Many IRS criminal cases involve circumstances that the press release does not capture. Some involve first-time offenders who made serious mistakes but had no prior criminal history. Some involve people who were operating businesses in rapidly changing legal environments and made compliance errors. Some involve individuals who were cooperative with the government throughout the process and received credit for that cooperation in sentencing.
The press release captures the allegations and the outcome. It does not capture the context, the cooperation, the restitution, or the life that came after. For many people, the life that came after is a genuinely compelling story. A business rebuilt after personal upheaval. A career redirected toward something more sustainable. A family supported and a community contributed to. That story deserves to be visible, and building it out is both the right thing to do and the most effective suppression strategy available.
Suppressing the press release
Suppression works by giving Google better options to show on the first page for your name. The IRS press release is one result. You need to build more results that are more relevant and more authoritative. For most individuals, the highest-impact assets are:
A personal website. A professionally built, name-optimized personal website is a highly reliable way to establish a strong position in Google for your own name. It is a page about you, on a domain you own, with content you control. Google considers it highly relevant to name searches. A strong personal website often holds a strong position for most names. Read our guide on personal websites and reputation for what effective personal sites look like.
LinkedIn. A complete, well-written LinkedIn profile often ranks highly in Google for professional names. If your LinkedIn is thin or out of date, updating it is one of the fastest moves you can make. It is free, it ranks reliably, and it gives you a professional narrative that competes directly with an IRS press release.
Press coverage. Legitimate press coverage in local publications, industry outlets, or business media creates additional strong results for your name. A feature story, an expert quote, or an authored article creates a page that competes for your name search. We help clients earn real press placements through our press placement services.
Professional profiles and associations. Industry directories, professional association profiles, and platform bios on relevant third-party sites all contribute to a first-page presence for your name. Each one is an additional result Google might show instead of the IRS press release.
What business owners should know
For business owners dealing with IRS press releases, there is an additional layer. Your personal name and your business name may both be affected, and the two often appear together in searches. We build content strategies that address both the personal name search and the business name search, so that clients, vendors, and partners who search either find something other than an IRS press release at the top of results.
Business owners who have rebuilt and are running successful operations have strong content opportunities. A company website that tells the story of your current business, team profiles, client testimonials, business press coverage, and industry content all contribute to a positive presence that competes effectively with older government content.
For the full picture of how government press release suppression works across all federal agencies, see our complete guide to suppressing government press releases from Google. If you are also dealing with news articles about the underlying case, our news article guide covers the approach for those.
If an IRS press release is showing up when people search your name and it is affecting your professional or personal life, start the conversation today.
Related resources
- Complete Government Press Release Guide
- Suppressing DOJ Press Releases
- Building a Personal Website
- Services for Executives and Business Owners
The broader context: search, reputation, and public information
Understanding why IRS press releases rank so stubbornly requires understanding how Google evaluates authority. Federal government domains carry some of the highest domain authority scores on the internet. Research from the Pew Research Center on Americans and Privacy found that 79 percent of adults feel they have very little control over the information collected and shared about them online. That sense of powerlessness is particularly acute for people dealing with government-published records, where the source's authority makes removal essentially impossible and visibility feels like a permanent condition.
The journalism industry's own structural shifts compound the problem. The Pew Research newspaper fact sheet documents the sustained decline in local newsroom staff across the country, which means fewer journalists available to write the kind of original, contextual follow-up stories that could tell a more complete version of someone's situation. At the same time, the Muck Rack State of Journalism report shows that the journalists who remain are increasingly reliant on search-optimized digital publishing, which means press releases, court records, and government announcements are often the most findable version of any story, even years after the underlying events concluded.
From a privacy standpoint, the FTC's privacy and security guidance makes clear that the United States does not have a broad "right to be forgotten" framework comparable to the European GDPR standard. That distinction matters here. Unlike in the EU, where individuals can petition Google to de-index certain results about them, Americans have no comparable legal mechanism for removing accurate government records from search results. The International Association of Privacy Professionals tracks this gap closely, and it remains one of the most significant structural differences between U.S. and European approaches to personal data in public contexts. For individuals named in IRS CI press releases, that gap is not abstract. It means suppression, not removal, is the only tool available.
What this looks like in practice
When contractors or local business owners face an IRS Criminal Investigation press release dominating their search results, the impact on bids and client relationships is immediate. The suppression process typically involves building a personal website optimized for the individual's name, updating and expanding their LinkedIn profile, and securing bylined articles in regional trade publications. Over time, this combination of assets creates enough authoritative content to push the IRS press release further down in standard Google results.
For founders raising capital, an older federal tax plea appearing during due diligence can derail funding rounds. If the individual has an uncommon name, a modest number of strong assets can shift rankings. Launching a personal site, activating a consistent LinkedIn publishing cadence, and securing quoted mentions in industry newsletters often yields positive movement. The speed of this movement reflects both the level of competition for the specific name and the authority of the assets prioritized from the start.
By the numbers: what the data says about search behavior and reputation
Understanding why suppression is the only realistic path starts with understanding how people actually use Google to research individuals. According to Pew Research's 2019 Americans and Privacy study, about 62 percent of Americans say they would not know how to remove inaccurate information about themselves online. That figure points to a real knowledge gap. Most people who find an IRS press release ranking for their name don't know that removal from irs.gov isn't possible, don't know that Google won't act on a standard request, and don't know that a structured content campaign is the only tool that actually works. The knowledge gap costs people months of inaction that makes the timeline longer and the suppression harder.
The challenge is compounded by how durable government domain authority is inside Google's ranking systems. The Google Helpful Content guidance published by Google Search Central makes clear that Google rewards pages it considers highly trustworthy and authoritative for a given query. A government domain like irs.gov carries institutional authority that almost no individual page can match directly. This is why the suppression strategy never tries to outrank the press release with a single page. It works by building a wide enough array of authoritative results that Google fills the visible first page with better options before the irs.gov result appears. Industry analysis from the Columbia Journalism Review has documented how institutional sources, including federal agencies, consistently earn first-page placement for named-individual queries because they're treated as definitive records. This is the structural dynamic we're working against, and it's why volume and variety of content matter as much as any single asset.
Media fragmentation also works in our favor. The Muck Rack State of Journalism report found that the number of active journalists and editorial outlets has continued to expand across digital channels, creating more opportunities for legitimate earned coverage in industry publications, local business media, and vertical-specific outlets. Each earned placement in a credible publication creates a new indexed result that competes directly for your name search. Earned media placements in publications with real editorial standards help push down a static government press release, particularly once those placements accumulate social sharing signals and inbound links. This compounding dynamic makes a long-term suppression campaign more effective over time.
If you're looking at an IRS press release in position 1 or 2 for your name right now, these numbers explain why the situation feels permanent but isn't. Google's first page has 10 organic positions. You don't need to erase the press release. You need to fill enough of those positions with content you control or influence that the press release gets pushed to a place most people never reach. Very few searchers click past page one. Getting the press release to page two is a significant step toward getting it out of the conversation entirely.
The long-term impact of suppression
When business owners complete a federal plea agreement and launch a new company, an older IRS Criminal Investigation press release often ranks highly for their name. Prospective clients may mention it directly or simply walk away from bids. The solution involves building a personal website optimized for the individual's name, updating their LinkedIn profile with detailed project descriptions, securing features in regional trade publications, and creating profiles on industry-specific platforms. Over many months, this work pushes the press release down. As the negative result moves off the first page, business owners typically find it easier to close contracts and rebuild their professional lives.