Guy with an accent called my parents being very vauge asking if different family members where there & mentioned an investigation and left off telling my father if he didn't cooperate the police would come. My father told him to send the police. My father said he made no sense. This is a scam looking for money & ss numbers. They called the number back later & they had a message on the machine saying it was the Internal Revenue Service. Nice touch but very much a scam.
Just got the same call on vm. Someone with broken English claimed to be calling from IRS Criminal Investigation stating his name is Mark Johnson and that I was hiding money from the federal government and I needed to call him immediately at 202-241-2806. Did some research and learned this is a scam.
I got a call from "Jack Smith" @202-241-2806. He had an Indian accent so thick I could only barely understand. I think he was accusing me of fraud. Ended message with "God Bless".
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: