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 same number today with the same msg as the rest of you telling us to call 571-526-0024 or we will be arrested. Bad accent, could not understand half of what he said . He must think we are all a bunch of idiots. Hoping no one falls for this!
We rec'd a call from 202-747-0984. The caller was foreign with an accent. couldn't understand his name. Told me legal action would be taken against us by the IRS. Wanted me to return the call by calling 571-526-0022. This is the 5th or 6th call we've gotten in as many weeks. getting really annoying.
I can tell that it is not the IRS. It is a bogus operation based overseas and they attempt to scare people in the hopes of stealing their money. The simple fact is, the IRS does not call people.
Got the same call as everyone else. They leave numereous messages as to my being arrested. This is so frustrating. They call all hours of day and noght
These jerks!!! They are calling from a different number this time, but the same scam. I'm going to run out of "blocked number" allowances if they keep this up :( Grrrrrr!!!