A National scam
tactic is growing involving suspects claiming to be Special Agents with the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or collection officials are contacting
unsuspecting victims. In many of these
incidents, suspects will become irate and put a tremendous amount of pressure
on citizens to pay a Past Due amounts immediately or face an Arrest Warrant
through a local law enforcement agency.
Suspects are known
to use tactics including calling from “spoofed” official telephone numbers and
other strategies including:
- Scammers use fake names and IRS badge numbers. They generally use common names and surnames to identify themselves.
- Scammers may be able to recite the last four digits of a victim’s Social Security number.
- Scammers spoof the IRS toll-free number on caller ID to make it appear that it’s the IRS calling.
- Scammers sometimes send bogus IRS emails to victims to support their bogus calls.
- Victims hear background noise of other calls being conducted to mimic a call site.
- After threatening victims with jail or driver’s license revocation, scammers hang up and others soon call back pretending to be from the local police or DMV, and the caller ID supports their claim.
In many of the
incidents, the suspect will attempt to have the victim purchase reloadable gift
credit cards and provide them with the information once the card has been
activated.
If you get a phone
call from someone claiming to be from the IRS, here’s what you should do:
- If you know you owe taxes or you think you might owe taxes, call the IRS at 1.800.829.1040. The IRS employees at that line can help you with a payment issue, if there really is such an issue.
- If you know you don’t owe taxes or have no reason to think that you owe any taxes (for example, you’ve never received a bill or the caller made some bogus threats as described above), then call and report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 1.800.366.4484.
For further
information on the related IRS scams please visit:
http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS-Reiterates-Warning-of-Pervasive-Telephone-Scam
