An IRS office, not in Nigeria or full of Nigerians.

It’s tax season, and that means that if you have yet to do your taxes, then you should probably get on that.  However, because it’s tax time, that means that scammers are out in full force looking to take advantage of the American’s natural fear of the Internal Revenue Service and its horde of actuaries and demons by posing as said demons to get you to give them money.  The IRS has warned that the largest-ever IRS phone scam is currently happening right now, so be wary and never feed the accountants.

Here’s how the scam works.  Someone calls your home and tells you they’re with the IRS, and that you owe back taxes.  They tell you you need to pay a certain amount via pre-paid debit card or money transfer, and if you refuse to pay up, they threaten arrest, loss of job, deportation, loss of business, lawsuits, and all sorts of bad, threatening noise to make you cave and send them that Amazon gift card or whatever they’re asking for.  The scam is so scary it works; some 20,000 people have reported being victimized to the IRS to the tune of $1 million dollars in stolen money.  Now that’s a scam with teeth.

Said J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, “This is the largest scam of its kind that we have ever seen.”

Tags: scams, con artists, irs scam, irs scam claims

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