Who called from 5303776497

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today warned consumers about a sophisticated phone scam targeting taxpayers, including recent immigrants, throughout the country.

Victims are told they owe money to the IRS and it must be paid promptly through a pre-loaded debit card or wire transfer. If the victim refuses to cooperate, they are then threatened with arrest, deportation or suspension of a business or driver’s license. In many cases, the caller becomes hostile and insulting.

“This scam has hit taxpayers in nearly every state in the country.  We want to educate taxpayers so they can help protect themselves.  Rest assured, we do not and will not ask for credit card numbers over the phone, nor request a pre-paid debit card or wire transfer,” says IRS Acting Commissioner Danny Werfel. “If someone unexpectedly calls claiming to be from the IRS and threatens police arrest, deportation or license revocation if you don’t pay immediately, that is a sign that it really isn’t the IRS calling.” Werfel noted that the first IRS contact with taxpayers on a tax issue is likely to occur via mail
Other characteristics of this scam include:
Scammers use fake names and IRS badge numbers. They generally use common names and surnames to identify themselves.
Scammers may be able to recite the last four digits of a victim’s Social Security Number.
Scammers spoof the IRS toll-free number on caller ID to make it appear that it’s the IRS calling.
Scammers sometimes send bogus IRS emails to some victims to support their bogus calls.
Victims hear background noise of other calls being conducted to mimic a call site.
After threatening victims with jail time or driver’s license revocation, scammers hang up and others soon call back pretending to be from the local police or DMV, and the caller ID supports their claim.
If you get a phone call from someone claiming to be from the IRS, here’s what you should do:
If you know you owe taxes or you think you might owe taxes, call the IRS at 1.800.829.1040. The IRS employees at that line can help you with a payment issue – if there really is such an issue.
If you know you don’t owe taxes or have no reason to think that you owe any taxes (for example, you’ve never received a bill or the caller made some bogus threats as described above), then call and report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 1.800.366.4484.
If you’ve been targeted by this scam, you should also contact the Federal Trade Commission and use their “FTC Complaint Assistant” at FTC.gov.  Please add "IRS Telephone Scam" to the comments of your complaint.
Taxpayers should be aware that there are other unrelated scams (such as a lottery sweepstakes) and solicitations (such as debt relief) that fraudulently claim to be from the IRS.
The IRS encourages taxpayers to be vigilant against phone and email scams that use the IRS as a lure. The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email to request personal or financial information.  This includes any type of electronic communication, such as text messages and social media channels. The IRS also does not ask for PINs, passwords or similar confidential access information for credit card, bank or other financial accounts. Recipients should not open any attachments or click on any links contained in the message. Instead, forward the e-mail to [email protected].

More information on how to report phishing scams involving the IRS is available on the genuine IRS website, IRS.gov.

http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS-Warns-of-Pervasive-Telephone-Scam

On Friday, 01/24/2014 I received a voice-mail on the east coast, just before 9 a.m. in the morning, from a California number:  530-876-6477.  On the caller ID it showed up as Unknown Name and Unknown Number.   The message was almost the same as some calls reported re: IRS on the Better Business Bureau site.  From the message, this is what I understood the person to say:

"This message is intended for ______.  The very second you receive this message, I need you or your ___ attorney, off- record, to call.  The issue at hand is extremely time sensitive.  My name is Ronnie Canon [spelling?] from Investigations Bureau of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the hotline to my division is  530-876-6477.  I repeat, 530-876-6477.  Don't try to disregard this and do return this call as soon as possible before any legal allegations take place against you.  We found there are certain issues in the income tax you paid last time.  So this is my last and final intention against you.  Good bye and take care."

He had a distinct accent, which sounded like the English spoken in Pakistan, India, and other regions in that area and he sounded reasonable and like a gentleman.  Fortunately, however, I did not pick up the phone, I recognized that such a call is a scam (thanks to AARP, who has been publishing scam and fraud alerts for awhile), and I reported it to the AARP Fraud Fighting Hot Line.  I've also reported this on the Better Business Bureau's blog site for their "Warning: New IRS Phone Scam" comment site (see Cameo's post, above).  The call was placed in California time a little before 6 a.m. Pacific Standard Time-- or 7 pm 1/25/14 Karachi time or about 7:30 pm 1/25/14 Mumbai, India time.  A cell phone could have a US phone number, but could be used anywhere in the world.  Have a lawyer call "off-record"?  Unknown Name and Unknown Number on caller-ID?  The IRS would not initiate a phone call.  Some Indian employees that have to contact the USA as part of their job are told to use an English-sounding name, but, of course, that is not their real name. (Maybe "Rani" becomes  "Ronnie" ? or "Kanoon" becomes "Canon" ?)  Their message creates worry? These signs together are all "red flags" for a scam or a scheme to get money to use for some other purpose through scare tactics (or other tactics to get your attention, such as, perhaps, the Pakistanis who are calling from SKYPE to get people to sign up for religious courses who offer to guide you to change settings on your computer so that they can set it up so you can connect to the live presentations online if you don't have SKYPE.  You wouldn't want to give a stranger the possibility of placing a virus on your computer and if you wanted to know more about a religion, one only needs to look in a phone book, call a religious studies program in a college, go to the library, ask a friend who is of that faith, or browse such topics on-line with your computer.)  When it's a scam, they are not who they say they are and/or their mission is different from their message. Be careful, please.

P.S.  Cameo's post location changed after my post. Currently, 01/25/2014, I see it at the beginning of Page 1 in this thread of posts.  Cameo referenced the Better Business Bureau site:  http://www.bbb.org/blog/2013/11/warning-new-irs-phone-scam/   Also, those of you who are AARP members, you can call one of the Fraud Fighting Hotline numbers to report a scam:  720-947-5308 or 720-947-5301.  Thanks for all the posts.  Every post is a help to someone.

calls our cell number which does not work at our home call back on land line will not except message or phone call