IRS imposters continue tax scam by telephone

Tax season may be over, but criminals posing as Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents continue to call Minnesotans and attempt to intimidate them into paying money. These criminals use a variety of ploys to lure victims, including using fake names, false IRS badge numbers, and even reciting the victim’s mailing address or the last four digits of their Social Security Number.  The callers may threaten arrest, jail time, passport revocation, and other legal action, unless the victim pays for purported back taxes owed to the IRS.

In many cases, it can be difficult to detect these fraudsters, who often call from outside the U.S.,  and use “spoofing” technology to hide the origin of their calls. Spoofing is used by these scammers who make a Washington D.C. telephone number appear on a resident’s caller ID, thereby masking their identity and evade law enforcement.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration notes that these scammers make about 10,000 calls per week. In the past two years, victims of this scam have reportedly lost $15 million.

If you receive a call that appears to come from the IRS, remember that the IRS does NOT:

1. Ask for credit or debit numbers over the phone;

2. Require you to use one specific method to pay back taxes; nor

3. Threaten to bring in local police or other law-enforcement groups to have you arrested for failure to pay taxes.

The best way to handle such a call is to hang up the phone. Speaking with the scammers may encourage them to call again.

You can report this scam to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration as follows:

Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration Headquarters, 1401 H St. NW Suite 469, Washington, DC 20005, 800-366-4484, https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/ contact_report_scam.shtml.