IRS Tax Scam
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IRS Tax Scam

Delve into the realm of IRS tax scams to understand the tactics fraudsters employ during tax season. This guide equips you with knowledge to protect your finances and personal information from cunning schemes. Stay informed, stay secure.

WHAT IS TAX SCAM ?

Millions have fallen prey to tax scams, losing not only substantial funds but also their personal data. The IRS maintains a strict policy of not initiating contact via email, text, or social media. However, scammers, employing various channels like regular mail and telephone calls, target individuals, businesses, and tax professionals. Tax phishing emails, seemingly from the IRS, can strike at any moment, presenting a significant challenge due to their authentic appearance. These scams aim to drain bank accounts, extract funds, or gather sensitive personal information, emphasizing the need for heightened awareness and protective measures.

SCAMS TARGETING TAXPAYERS

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a warning about an enduring phone scam that involves criminals using phone numbers that mimic IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centers (TACs). In this deceptive scheme, scammers claim to be calling from a local IRS TAC office, manipulating their computers to display the authentic TAC telephone number on the victim's Caller ID. After an initial call, the criminals hang up and then call back, successfully "spoofing" the Caller ID to make it appear as if the IRS office is calling. It is crucial for taxpayers to stay vigilant against such tax scams, especially after the tax filing season concludes. Importantly, the IRS emphasizes that its employees at TAC offices do not make unsolicited calls demanding payment for overdue tax bills. The IRS communicates important matters through official mail delivered by the United States Postal Service. While there are limited circumstances where the IRS may call or visit, such as for overdue tax bills or during criminal investigations, taxpayers typically receive prior written notices before any such contact. Staying informed and cautious is key to thwarting these fraudulent attempts.

NOTE THAT THE IRS DOES NOT

  • Demand that you use a specific payment method, such as a prepaid debit card. The IRS will not ask for your debit or credit card numbers over the phone. If you owe taxes, make payments to the United States Treasury or review IRS online options.
  • Demand that you pay taxes without questioning or appealing the amount they say you owe. Generally, the IRS will first mail you a bill if you owe any taxes.
  • Threaten to bring in local police, immigration officers to have you arrested for not paying. The IRS also cannot revoke your driver's license, business licenses, or immigration status. Threats like these are common tactics scammers use to trick victims into buying into their schemes.

Taxpayers who receive the IRS phone scam or any IRS impersonation scam should report it to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

SOURCE OF IRS SCAM :

SCAM - 1 :-

Thane ( India ) IRS Scam: The mastermind involved four other frauds to cheat foreign citizens.
Taxpayers across the country sighed in relief after the arrest of Sagar Thakkar, a 24-year-old Indian man accused of running the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) phone scams. Sagar Thakkar, 24, was detained in Mumbai after arriving on a flight from Dubai. He was the mastermind of IRS scam call centers in the state of Maharashtra and one center in Ahmedabad, said Mukund Hatote, assistant commissioner of police in Thane( north of Mumbai ). News of the scam broke in October 2017 when Indian police raided nine calls centers, eight in Thane in Maharashtra, and arrested around 70 people on suspicion of posing as IRS agents to steal cash from U.S. citizens. Workers at bogus call centers used American accents to impersonate IRS agents. They told their victims that they owed back taxes and would risk arrest if they hung up or failed to pay up. Thakkar, also known as "Shaggy," was one of 61 defendants mentioned in a U.S. accusation exposed last October 2017. The bogus call center workers were accused of stealing from 15,000 people by using the IRS scam and other fraud schemes.

SCAM - 2 :-

Millions of Americans have fallen for a trick claiming they owe back taxes and must pay immediately. On the other side of the globe, one determined inspector finally delivered justice.
Madan Ballal along with 48 other officers of the Thane Crime Branch, the criminal investigation wing of the police department in a city on the outskirts of Mumbai, India, seized a group of youngsters for making IRS fraud phone calls. The officers told that the offenders were English-speaking Indians who worked in a sprawling network of bogus call centers in western India. They called American citizens, pretending to be officials of the Internal Revenue Service, and demanded immediate payment of tax arrears, threatening imprisonment and deportation. Thousands of Americans had been cheated in the nine months of the network's operation, collectively cheated around $250 million.

Ballal, a 45-year-old inspector, did not fully understand how the fraud worked. For six consecutive evenings, the officers arrived at a tea stall under a complex in Mira-Bhayandar, where one of the bogus call centers operated, pretending to be college students looking for jobs. Slowly, they began asking about the call center and confirmed that those luxuries came from working eight hours a day at a desk, by simply calling Americans and reading a script. The call center workers appeared to be confused by the police presence, until Ballal took a supervisor aside and explained that a raid was underway. There were 92 present, including phone operators, supervisors, and tech support staff. They were asked to step aside, as Ballal and his team began inspection. First, they took down mundane details about computer models, then the names, ages, and addresses of each of the employees there, then the questioning began. The suspects began crying. Some said they didn't know what they were doing; some said they were carried away by the perks. One executive asked earnestly whether scamming Americans was punishable in India; no Indians were scammed. Around midnight, Ballal found a hard drive containing archived tape of previous calls. A database of the records of American taxpayers had been acquired on the black market through partners in the United States. Thus, Ballal arrested those frauds and proved himself an eligible, genuine police inspector.

SCAM - 3 :-

The scammers gaming India's overcrowded job market.
In 2017, a call-center job at a BPO (a business process outsourcing company) has lost value over the years because of poor oversight, and competing markets including the Philippines and US prisons. But still, there were jobs. At the bottom of such job adverts is the name and number of an "HR", a middleman between a jobseeker and a placement agency.

One day, Snigdha Poonam, author at Hindustan Times and her colleague called one of them. The middleman wasn't interested in knowing anything about them. He simply told us to expect a text message after the call, and to follow the instructions. The text invited them to an interview at a recruitment office in west Delhi, where they were supposed to hand over the code at the bottom of the message. Their interviewer told them to introduce themselves. And she was confident about offering jobs to them anyway. The text message came in as promised, and directed them to an even more ambiguous address in south-east Delhi for the "training". All they wanted was to start the jobs they had been promised. But they were then led to another floor, divided into groups and sent for a fresh round of interviews. This time they faced actual representatives of companies interested in hiring them. Many jobseekers leave their training with appointment letters asking them to report to work the next week. These letters never mention the name or address of the company. Everyone is told to expect another text message with further details.

One young man, Pradeep Saluja, left the building thinking that he was about to start working in customer service for Amazon, as the job ad had promised. When Poonam called him a month later, he told her that the job turned out to be in a small office with a strange name, in Gurugram. He was given a script to memorize and asked to get on the phone, along with 50 other executives of a similar age. The job was easy, he said. All he had to do was call people in the US from a list, introduce himself as Charles, and tell them they were under federal investigation for tax evasion. He told the victims that he was going to transfer the call to a different department, where one of his seniors would help them pay their taxes through an online money transfer. In this way, it keeps going. The way to scam Indians at such a scale, apparently, is to promise them jobs, the fulfillment of their most cherished dream. At least some of those responding to ads promising mass openings and unlimited incentives will end up landing a job even if that the job is just to scam other jobseekers.

IRS SCAMMERS ARRESTED IN INDIA :





HOW TO DEAL WITH IRS SCAMMERS?

Stage 1: Trying to regain power by trolling the scammers
The hardest thing about phone scams is that there is little recourse the scammers can take. Even if we don't fall for the scam, they waste our time, over and over again.
Examples of some live-tweeting fraud calls by a genuine taxpayer:


Stage 2: Learning how they create and influence authority
There are many flaws to this scam. One is that it is almost always an Indian man in a call center, which made it hard to believe their names were "Steve Smith" and "Joy Smith." The other is that they clearly read off a script and were trying to get through their lines as fast as possible. We could hear the steady hum of their colleagues doing the same.
In short, they (frauds) professionalized the scam. They found ways to implicitly suggest.


Stage 3: Force them to come up with an end game
Try to make them show some kind of indication that they are aware of what he/she is doing. Make them elicit some kind of guilt.

Stage 4: Justice, maybe
They might get caught. We couldn't stop reading news stories because it is an ongoing operation. Let us assume that all those IRS scammers will be brought to justice by our government officials as soon as possible.

HOW TO REPORT IRS SCAMS?

1: Flag emails from the IRS asking for your personal information:
If you receive an email claiming to be from the IRS that requests your tax information, banking information, or any other personal information, it is likely a scam. Do not open any attachments in the email or click on any links in the body of the email. Instead of responding to the email, take a screenshot of it and delete it.

  • You can then use the screenshot to report the email to the IRS as a scam.

2: Record the employee's name and badge number if you get a suspicious phone call:
If you receive a phone call from someone claiming to be from the IRS and they ask for personal or tax information over the phone, it is likely a scam call. Instead of providing any information, ask the person for their name, badge number, and call-back number.

  • You can then use this information to look up the person through the IRS to confirm whether they are legitimate or a scammer.
  • The IRS typically arranges a call back to your number. A legitimate IRS representative will follow this protocol, while a scammer will often insist on immediate information.

3: Check the information on a letter or notice through the IRS home page:
If you receive a letter or notice asking you to fill out a form or provide your personal information, do not respond without checking it first. Verify the instructions and forms on the IRS home page to ensure they match. If they don't, do not respond to the letter, as scammers often modify real IRS letters to deceive people.

  • Keep the letter or notice so you can refer to it when reporting the scam to the IRS.

SAMPLES OF SOME TEXTS RECEIVED AS COMPLAINTS REGARDING IRS SCAM:

TEXT 1:

"Received a call from 203 441 7004 claiming an arrest warrant from the IRS was issued for me."


TEXT 2:

"Tried 3 times; the call goes through, and all you hear is a lot of people talking in the background. Called a fourth time to be told it was the IRS. When I questioned him on the authenticity, he hung up on me. Called 3 more times only to be answered and immediately hung up on. Called for the eighth time, and a woman answered. I told her about the phone calls; she said they are from the IRS, and I better take it seriously. When I asked for an English-speaking person with no foreign accents, she too hung up on me. Thank you."


TEXT 3:

"Be advised, phone calls that say they are with the IRS and say, 'You will be taken into custody by the local cops as there are four serious allegations pressed on your name at this moment. We would request you to get back to us so that we can discuss this case before taking any legal action against you. The number to reach us is 719-505-9513, I repeat 719-505-9513. Thank you…" It's a scam. The IRS doesn't put warrants for your arrest if you don't pay, nor would they call you regarding a past-due payment. I am an employee for the IRS. When an IRS employee makes contact on the phone with a taxpayer, they will identify themselves by name and a 10-digit employee number. I did forward this voicemail to the appropriate department in the IRS, but I don't think it will be investigated properly. About 3 months ago, I was getting phone calls from these scammers and forwarded it but did not hear anything about it."


TEXT 4:

"Hello, I received a call from this number, and I didn't answer because I don't answer calls from numbers I do not know. So, I got a voicemail saying I have a warrant out for my arrest and I have to call that number back to avoid a warrant against me. I called the number back, and the phone started beeping and saying it was disconnected. I did some research and read that the IRS will never call you and will send you a notice in the mail. Please warn people about this number!! THANK YOU!"


TEXT 5:

"I received a call from 407-330-4506 stating that I was being prosecuted for IRS fraud, and a warrant was being issued. Left a message to call 818-476-7674. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated."


TEXT 6:

"Says it's the IRS and that they have been trying to get a hold of someone for 6 months, a very broken recording. Called back, and the number rang 8 times, then an actual person answered."


TEXT 7:

"I received calls from this number on both my cell phones today at 8:35 and 8:36 am. Both times were robo calls; a recorded message that informed me if I didn't return the call, the IRS case against me would go to court, and if I didn't call them immediately, two 'cops' would show up at my door. Thank you for any information you can provide."


TEXT 8:

"They are claiming I owed the IRS money since 2010 and threatening to put me in jail if I don't resolve and settle the issue today. When they asked me to pay by today, or the court is going to arrest me today, I became suspicious and hung up the call. Then they tried to call from all these numbers, male and female, local and Florida. Please verify and file to your database if those are scam phones.
Thank you!
Mars"


TEXT 9:

"I received a call from these people, saying it's my final notice before an arrest warrant, blah, blah, blah. It's a scam, especially since I'm up-to-date on my taxes, and there are absolutely no miscalculations! Anyways, thank you for your time. Here is the number plus a blotchy transcript. They hung up when I mentioned I wasn't aware the IRS issued arrests for unpaid or miscalculated taxes. Lol"