Thursday the Internal Revenue Service reported over 20,000 Americans were cheated out of a collective $1 million by fraudsters claiming to be from the IRS. The agency described the scam as America’s ‘largest-ever telephone tax scam’. The confidence scheme was fairly sophisticated, but it is a sad state of affairs when citizens are unable distinguish between scam artists and their own government.
The alleged conmen hacked their caller ID so they appeared to be dialing from a local IRS office, then convinced taxpayers that they were legit by reciting the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, according to a release from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. They’ve swindled taxpayers from nearly every state into sending them money using a prepaid card or wire transfer.“This is the largest scam of its kind that we have ever seen,” said J. Russell George, the inspector general. “If someone unexpectedly calls claiming to be from the IRS and uses threatening language if you don’t pay immediately, that is a sign that it really isn’t the IRS calling.”The IRS doesn’t actually call people to demand unpaid tax money, at least not before sending out letters first. They also never ask for wire, credit card number or prepaid card transfers over the phone.
Why did people fall for this then? To put further pressure on their victims, the scammers allegedly phoned them again, changing the caller ID to show a police or motor vehicle office number, and threatening arrest, deportation or loss of a business or driver’s license.
Source: Marketwatch
Photo: Chuck Holton on Flickr
thaye are the same thing
It’s Obama care. Make this TRAITOR pay for it.
Phone cons are always out there and I still don’t understand why people haven’t figured that out. I understand some old people, senile people, might be easy victims, but I still don’t get it.
PEOPLE NEED TO WAKE UP. YOU CAN’T BE THAT STIPID.
Sounds like they are butthurt, just hire the scammers and there ya go! Anyone remember “Catch me if you can”?
why you tell them get a $#%&!@*ing warrant and slam down the phone
hey what is the diff ??????
This is obnoxious. Where will this idiiocy end?
Oh come on. You know it was the IRS. When called to task they blamed a different con artist.
Lying to cover their butts.