Yesterday, I received an alarming phone call.
It was a voice-recording of an official-sounding female, saying that there’s a lawsuit filed against me for taxes owed, and that I must call this number: 213-260-3714.
There are several things wrong about that phone call:
- The IRS does not conduct business with a phone call.
- Strangely, although I am being sued, the IRS phone call was impersonal because it did not address me by my name.
- Are there so many of these lawsuits that the IRS makes robocalls?
So I did a search on the Internet and, sure enough, my suspicion is confirmed.
A post on called2us.com says:
IRS (Internal Revenue Service) has issued a warning for a phone scam targeting American taxpayers, in which individuals fraudulently claiming to be IRS officials call demanding payment for fake tax liens.
The scammers usually call from a cloned number with a District of Columbia code (202 area code). The number 202-609-7070 has been frequent in complaints in the month of September.
The phoney agent, who usually has a heavy accent, will call or leave a voicemail saying the potential prey owes money to the IRS, and if it isn’t paid immediately, they will be under arrest soon….
The IRS says they have received 95,000 complaints to date about that scam, and about 2,000 people have lost an estimated $7 million from the fraud.
J. Koskinen from IRS commented: “However people have to remember that the Internal Revenue Service will not be a call from out of the blue, but through official IRS correspondence sent through the regular US mail. A large red flag for these scams are angry, threatening calls from these folks who say they are from the IRS and urging immediate payment. This is not how we operate. People have to hang up immediately and phone the IRS.
If you received an IRS impersonation scam phone call, report it to the U.S. Treasury by calling 1-800-366-4484 or fill out a very short form online.
~Eowyn