IRS phone scam - busted

[Texas Proud]

To mods... I searched, but could not find the thread that talked about this... move if you want.


Did anybody see the news about this IRS phone scam You know, where they call and say they are filing suit and if you do not pay they are sending out the police.....


Well, it looks like they arrested people for this... but I was surprised when they said they think that $300 MILLION had been scammed from people... the people they talked to were not old senile people, but seemed to be middle age or younger...

Still do not know how anybody with intelligence would fall for this scam....

 

[MichaelB]

There are quite a few threads on this.
Here's one http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/irs-law-suit-81076.html
Here's another http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/irs-after-me-80560.html
One more for good luck http://www.early-retirement.org/for...-scams-telemarketers-robocalls-etc-83556.html

In this case no harm in another, but a slight change to the thread title will help future searches.

 

[Sunset]

Hey, so are you saying the gift cards I sent to the IRS to avoid arrest didn't actually pay my IRS bill ??

 

[Big_Hitter]

i was getting one call a day there for a while

 

[travelover]

i was getting one call a day there for a while

Me, too. Got tired of running up to the store for more iTunes cards.

 

[scrabbler1]

I read this heartwarming story on CNN this morning. A California cabbie helped a 92-year-old woman avoid getting scammed by a fake IRS agent by driving her to a police station instead of the bank where she was going to withdraw $25k.


https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/16/us/taxi-driver-prevents-scam-trnd/index.html

 

[easysurfer]

Before I got a call blocker for my landline I did get one of these IRS scam type calls. The caller mentioned is so called police badge number and said that I better call back or he'd take action. Kinda wish now I answered and asked him if I could pay the fine in pennies .

 

[CaptTom]

Well, it looks like they arrested people for this... but I was surprised when they said they think that $300 MILLION had been scammed from people... the people they talked to were not old senile people, but seemed to be middle age or younger...

Still do not know how anybody with intelligence would fall for this scam....

This is a common scam. I suspect lots of gangs of scammers are doing it. Arresting one probably won't make much difference.

As for intelligence, well...

I agree that $300M is hard to believe. But I've always said it's hard to over-estimate the level of stupidity (and in this case, fear and greed) in the general population.

What's even scarier, is these people are allowed to vote.

 

[Sunset]

This is a common scam. I suspect lots of gangs of scammers are doing it. Arresting one probably won't make much difference.

As for intelligence, well...

I agree that $300M is hard to believe. But I've always said it's hard to over-estimate the level of stupidity (and in this case, fear and greed) in the general population.

What's even scarier, is these people are allowed to vote.

And have children to pass on their wisdom

 

[scrabbler1]

I was watching a Senate hearing on C-Span about SS impersonation scams.


https://www.c-span.org/video/?468676-1/social-security-scams


The first part of the hearing was rather dry and uninteresting. But the second part was more interesting. If you go to the 1 hour and 12 minute mark, you will hear the story of Machel Anderson who got scammed out of more than $100k. Even though you will probably wonder, as I did, as to how she could believe this imposter, it is still heart-wrenching to listen to.


One of the other panelists, Justin Groshon, the manager of a SSA field office in Maine, spoke about secondary effects of the imposter scam. One is that his office was inundated with calls from worried people who were skeptical about the fake callers and were calling the local office to figure out what to do, if there was a problem. These hundreds of calls basically shut down the office from doing much of any work for a few days. Then, there were instances where his office's reps had to make legit calls to local people about forms they had filled out. The people thought these legit callers were imposters and wouldn't listen to them, as the SS reps correctly had to ask for personal info so they would know they were speaking to the correct people. This also slowed down the processing of forms, sometimes requiring in-person visits to people who lived an hour+ away in those rural areas.