Call today, insisted my husband was about to be arrested..supposed "Officer Brian McAllister from Criminal Investigation of IRS...202 241 4518"...could hear call center noises in the background...
Comfirmed fraud attempt. 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:
Got a call today from this number. I called the FTC tip line and filed a formal complaint. The FTC number is 1-877-438-4338. Call them and file a complaint. You can also check current scams on the FTC website at consumer.ftc.gov.
pages 3 and 4 on this web site are about scams about government imposters.
Same as the above writer. I got a call today from this number. I also called the FTC tip line and filed a formal complaint. The number is 1-877-438-4338.
Call today, insisted my husband was about to be arrested..supposed "Officer Brian McAllister from Criminal Investigation of IRS...202 241 4518"...could hear call center noises in the background...