Businesses have added 4.5 million workers under a new program that provides tax breaks for hiring unemployed workers, the Treasury Department said Monday.

It is unclear, however, how many of those workers would have been added without the tax break.

President Barack Obama signed a law in March that exempts businesses hiring people who have been unemployed for at least 60 days from paying the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax through December. Employers get an additional $1,000 credit if new workers stay on the job a full year.

Treasury released a report Monday estimating that from February to May, businesses added 4.5 million workers who qualify for the tax breaks. Those businesses are projected to save $8.5 billion in taxes.

The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into whether some HSBC Holdings Plc clients may have failed to disclose offshore accounts, lawyers familiar with the probe said on Tuesday.

The London-based bank has become the latest focus of a widening federal probe into U.S. citizens believed to have stored billions of dollars of assets in offshore accounts to avoid scrutiny by domestic tax authorities.

HSBC clients have received a June 21 letter from Kevin Downing, a senior litigator at the Justice Department who oversaw the UBS probe, that says they are subjects of a criminal investigation. Reuters obtained a copy of the letter.

A Justice Department representative did not immediately return an email request for comment.

Last year, Switzerland's UBS AG admitted to criminal wrongdoing for helping U.S. clients evade taxes. It agreed to pay a $780 million penalty and hand over details on more than 250 client accounts, and later agreed to disclose names of 4,450 wealthy U.S. clients to tax investigators.

A federal jury has found an Illinois couple guilty of defrauding Best Buy out of $41 million by over-billing the Richfield-based company for computer parts.

Russell Adam Cole, 50, and Abby Rae Cole, 53, of Deerfield, Ill., were found guilty Thursday of mail fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, tax evasion and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with the scheme.

The IRS led the investigation into the case.

According to prosecutors, Best Buy created a repair service on products in the early 2000s and solicited vendors to submit bids on certain parts they wanted to supply for the repair service.

The Coles owned and operated a computer parts distribution company called the Chip Factory, Inc. For about four years ending in August 2007, Best Buy accounted for most of Chip Factory's sales.

But court records showed that the Coles made Chip Factory quote fraudulently low prices in Best Buy's auction system to obtain computer repair parts. After winning bids, the Coles billed Best Buy prices that were higher than the ones quoted in the bidding process.

Over time, prosecutors said the Coles billed Best Buy for more than $41 million than had been agreed to in the bidding process.

A former Best Buy employee, 39-year-old Robert Paul Bossany of Prior Lake, helped carry out the scheme. Bossany pleaded guilty in January 2009 to accepting bribes from Chip Factory and conspiring to defraud Best Buy while working as Best Buy's primary contact with Chip Factory.

A Chicago lawyer was found guilty Wednesday of conspiracy to commit tax fraud in connection with the sale of tax shelters.

A New York jury also convicted John Ohle III, 42, of two counts of tax evasion for failing to report about $6.5 million in income in 2001 and 2002, the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan said Thursday. A fellow lawyer, William Bradley of Hammond, La., also was convicted in the conspiracy scheme.

The guilty verdicts are a big victory for New York federal prosecutors who have investigated a web of Chicago lawyers, bankers and accountants who helped hundreds of wealthy clients skirt taxes through the sale of questionable tax shelters starting in the 1990s. Last year, seven people, including the former chief executive of BDO Seidman, a Chicago-based accounting firm, were charged with fraud and conspiracy related to the sale of allegedly fraudulent tax shelters.

One of the shelters was known as "Hedge Option Monetization of Economic Remainder" or "HOMER." The U.S. attorney's office said Ohle sold HOMER to clients of Bank One, where he was employed from November 1999 to early 2002. Ohle continued selling the shelter after leaving the bank and forming his own company, Chicago-based Dumaine Group LLC.

Prosecutors had alleged that Ohle and Bradley conspired with others to create fraudulent invoices to obtain referral fees on transactions involving HOMER. Ohle illegally collected more than $800,000, prosecutors said.

The Washington-based court on Monday said it will hear two appeals filed by the state and supporters of the 13-year-old program that provides dollar-for-dollar state income tax breaks for donations to school tuition organizations.

The action "is terrific news for the thousands of families who desperately need scholarship assistance to send their children to the school of their choice," said Tim Keller, executive director of the Institute for Justice's Arizona chapter.

The institute was one of several groups defending the program.

A lawyer for the challengers said he hopes the justices' action doesn't mean the Supreme Court intends to open the door for broad state funding of religious instruction.

"I hope they didn't take this case to say that," said attorney Paul Bender.

The American Civil Liberties Union and others challenged the program as unconstitutional because religious organizations award most of the scholarships and require children to enroll in religious schools. The suit says the program amounts to an unconstitutional state endorsement of religion.

The Arizona Supreme Court previously upheld the constitutionality of the 1997 law as written, but the current case being considered by federal courts challenges how the program has been implemented.

A U.S. District Court judge dismissed the current case, but the federal appeals court in San Francisco last year ruled that the lawsuit could proceed. In that ruling, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel said the program could be unconstitutional because parents seeking scholarships didn't have a realistic range of education choices for students to attend nonreligious schools.

The federal government is trying to bar a financial attorney from offering alleged fraudulent tax saving schemes that help wealthy clients, many of them in the St. Louis area, according to a suit filed Monday in U.S. District Court here.

In the suit, the Internal Revenue Service asks the court to forbid St. Louis attorney Philip A. Kaiser and others affiliated with him from promoting fraudulent tax schemes. The suit says those schemes include:

- sham transactions claiming "massive" charitable deductions, with little or no money going to legitimate charities;

- evasion of federal income tax on gains from stock sales by disguising the sales as loans;

- illegal circumvention of contribution limits for Roth IRAs;

- and evasion of income tax on business earnings by using transactions with sham corporations.