My brother received two calls from 877-403-6551, then a followup call from 202-905-9654. The first two calls were from a man calling himself Sean but he had an Indian accent. He said he was from the IRS and my brother needed to call immediately to avoid legal action. The last call from the 202 number was from a different person but he claimed my brother would be arrested if he didn't resolve this matter immediately.
Total SCAM. Please read the posts for the 877 number.
My brother received two calls from 877-403-6551, then a followup call from 202-905-9654. The first two calls were from a man calling himself Sean but he had an Indian accent. He said he was from the IRS and my brother needed to call immediately to avoid legal action. The last call from the 202 number was from a different person but he claimed my brother would be arrested if he didn't resolve this matter immediately.
Total SCAM. Please read the posts for the 877 number.
Report the Calls to the real IRS here:
•report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 800-366-4484.
•You can also file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission at FTC.gov. Add "IRS Telephone Scam" to the comments in your complaint.
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Do consider maybe getting a call blocking device or phone.. You can google them and many are around $60.00 or so.
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: