Got a call from this number claiming to be Ryan Butler from the IRS fraud department. Ryan was claiming that I was being turned into the Sheriff's department due to defrauding the government of tax money. But then he offered to settle over the phone by guiding me to a store to purchase tax payment coupons and giving him those numbers for 2800 dollars.
Caller stated name was Richard (couldn't understand last name) from legal dept, internal revenue, claiming legal application submitted regarding tax fraud against my name & social security #. Said to call them "before things go wrong for me" & gave the above # to call back. He had some type of accent, possibly Indian. His English was not grammatically correct, so I am assuming this is some sort of scam, since I don't believe the IRS would contact regarding anything like that by phone. Besides the fact that there would be no reason for something like that against me.
This is a Pakistan or India based IRS scam. Do not fall for it. The IRS does not initiate any legal action via phone.
Read http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/press/press_tigta-2014-03.htm
As general background information, here are a few things you can do:
1) Report it to TIGTA under http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/contact_report_scam.shtml especially if you have become a victim (lost money, gave personal information etc.). You can also file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission at ftc.gov/complaint (include “IRS Telephone Scam" in your complaint). This way you can also help the government establish specific fraud patterns.
2) Help kill their phone lines. The scammers use Voice over IP lines (e.g. magicJack (Ymax corporation)) to make it seem as if they are calling from the US. This is always against these companys' terms of service and can lead to immediate termination of their contract and blocking of their IP addresses for future attempts to register. Do a reverse look up of their telephone number (e.g. www.whitepages.com) to identify the Voice over IP provider and report it to the company and or law enforcement (local police and/or state attorney general)
3) If you are really annoyed: call or write to your representative in Congress. As these scams happen all over the country maybe this will trigger a reaction and provide US law enforcement agencies with the political backing and the resources they need to work in India and Pakistan together with local authorities (it can happen, read: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/ex-call-cen ... mmission-320427). A US task force has already been set up in Jamaica to nab scammers there (see http://www.ice.gov/doclib/news/library/reports/cornerstone/cornerstone7-1.pdf). You can use the following template for your letter (more powerful!) or email: