Because trying to steal money from others will never get old for criminals, scammers are constantly changing tacks to come up with new ways to rake in their ill-gotten gains. This tax season, there’s a new trick bedeviling taxpayers over the phone.
The Internal Revenue Service is advising folks to be wary of scammers calling taxpayers to tell them they need to verify some of the information on this year’s tax return. In some cases, the caller will aggressively push the person to make a payment.
The scam goes down something like this: a scammer calls up and says, “Hey, I’m with the IRS and I have your tax return. I need to verify some information to process your return though.”
They’ll then ask for personal information like a Social Security number or financial info like bank numbers or credit cards.
In some cases, scammers will impersonate officials and use threats to intimidate and bully a victim into paying. Sometimes they’ll threaten to arrest, deport, or revoke the license of their victim if they don’t get the money. They even call up local law enforcement and make an emergency report, to convince victims that the SWAT team is there to make them pay.
Scammers may even alter their caller ID number to make it look more like the IRS is calling, by using IRS titles, faked names, and false badge numbers. But even if someone knows your name and address, that doesn’t mean they’re official.
“These schemes continue to adapt and evolve in an attempt to catch people off guard just as they are preparing their tax returns,” said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. “Don’t be fooled. The IRS won’t be calling you out of the blue asking you to verify your personal tax information or aggressively threatening you to make an immediate payment.”
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
No comments:
Post a Comment