Friends and Neighbors:
Please beware of a tax scam being perpetrated by yet unidentified foreign criminals. The way the scam works is you get a voice mail message from a person claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service telling you that you have a substantial unresolved tax debt because you under-reported your income or you made a significant error in your tax calculations. You are warned by this caller, with a very heavy foreign accent by the way, that you must call the number (202) 280-7395 immediately or you will face dire consequences. If you take the bait and call back, you will be instructed to pay by credit card or wire transfer a large payment to avoid wage garnishment, forfeiture of your property, or criminal prosecution. Many people have already fallen for the scam and lost thousands of dollars.
Don't be fooled. There are several red flags here:
1) As an attorney who has dealt with client's with tax issues over the years, I can assure you that the IRS does not initiate contact with a taxpayer by phone call. If you owe taxes, you will receive a letter from the Internal Revenue Service which will give you instructions as to how to respond.
Please beware of a tax scam being perpetrated by yet unidentified foreign criminals. The way the scam works is you get a voice mail message from a person claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service telling you that you have a substantial unresolved tax debt because you under-reported your income or you made a significant error in your tax calculations. You are warned by this caller, with a very heavy foreign accent by the way, that you must call the number (202) 280-7395 immediately or you will face dire consequences. If you take the bait and call back, you will be instructed to pay by credit card or wire transfer a large payment to avoid wage garnishment, forfeiture of your property, or criminal prosecution. Many people have already fallen for the scam and lost thousands of dollars.
Don't be fooled. There are several red flags here:
1) As an attorney who has dealt with client's with tax issues over the years, I can assure you that the IRS does not initiate contact with a taxpayer by phone call. If you owe taxes, you will receive a letter from the Internal Revenue Service which will give you instructions as to how to respond.
2) A caller with a very heavy foreign accent is likely calling from an oversees call center. The (202) area code number is being forwarded, probably through a series of transfers, to an off-shore call center located who knows where.
3) If the caller left a message on your cell phone, or worse still, on your spouse's or other family member's cell phone, and you know you didn't put that number on your tax return, that caller found you by phishing, a random search process in which you happened to be "lucky" enough to win the scammer's lottery.
The bottom line is whatever you do, don't call the number back and by all means, don't give up any of your hard earned money. If you think you might legitimately owe the IRS, call 1-800-829-1040 and ask to speak to a representative about your particular situation.
Please share this information with your family members, friends and neighbors so we can dry up this lucrative criminal enterprise and send the perpetrators back into the holes they crawled out of.
Bradley A. Thomas
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