Just received a call from 202-864-1277. They claimed to be the IRS. The background sounded like a call center. The person gave me a name and badge number. They said that they conducted an audit for certain years and claimed that there was a miscalculation and we owed several thousand, which I know is false. I challenged them, knowing a call wouldn't happen like that and the person started yelling at me saying authorities would arrive to arrest us within 45 minutes and we would owe much more if we didn't pay over the phone at that very moment. I told him I knew it was a scam, he yelled at me more and hung up. I really hope that no one would be naive enough to give those people a credit card number.
Ducking spineless piece of crap pretended to be IRS. See below:
IRS Reiterates Warning of Pervasive Telephone Scam
IR-2014-53, April 14, 2014
WASHINGTON — As the 2014 filing season nears an end, the Internal Revenue Service today issued another strong warning for consumers to guard against sophisticated and aggressive phone scams targeting taxpayers, including recent immigrants, as reported incidents of this crime continue to rise nationwide. These scams won’t likely end with the filing season so the IRS urges everyone to remain on guard.
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 but not by calling them back directly (the number may be spoofed and repeat calls by you may - under exceptional circumstances- amount to harassment). 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: