Dangerous New Trend in IRS Scams

I just got a threatening voice mail.

I think you're probably right. I suspect there's more to the story than we know.

Trend for sure. My land line answering machine is constantly getting calls from and messages left by a recording saying they are the IRS and that I owe back taxes and that I should call immediately to make arrangements to clear the debt or go be in serious trouble. When I get around to calling the number back I get a recording saying the number has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Incidentally, some months ago when I returned the call, the recorded message was from a Republican Party fund raising arm. I thought I called the wrong number, so I hung up and called back and got the same recording. They used the ruse about taxes and then tried to get money from me to support them! You've got to be freaking kidding me.

I do not believe the scammers would call the local police, because what would they get out of it.  They would have to come to the police station or to court.

JMP, you didn't actually read what this thread is about, did you? Although fake IRS calls are a trend (or have been for about two years – welcome to 2016, please try to keep up), this thread is about fake SWAT team requests placed to 911 in conjunction with the calls. Since this thread started over two months ago and there have been exactly zero recurrences this is clearly not a trend but a freak, one-off event.

Most of the IRS scam callers are stationed overseas. You honestly believe the foreign scammers are very worried about placing false calls to a local, county or state law enforcement and getting caught? Can you say "needle in a haystack?"

I get what (I think) he's saying. They aren't worried about getting caught, but why would they go to the effort? There's no gain for them. And given the number of times people don't buy into the scam (which from CJ's(?) video a few months back), they get turned down a lot. It's a numbers game and enough people give them money to be worth it. They are thieves and not afraid of placing false 911 calls, but they are also relatively smart and pragmatic and generally unlikely to waste the time and effort - and they don't need to do this. That's why I wondered why this example was different. What was different about her or him? What set this dude off and start the constant harassment and calling 911?

I'm in agreement. Their only "fear" about placing 911 calls is making themselves a big enough target to be worth going after. Changing the phone system enough to make calls quickly traceable again would be a major undertaking. Complex and vastly expensive. Right now, scammer calls fall into the "nuisance" category as far as anyone in power is concerned. If they were to take up "swatting" to any significant extent that would change. Which is exactly why they won't do it. Stay under the radar and keep moving from one victim to the next. That's how they survive.
(BTW: I missed that video you refer to. Got a link?)

I wouldn't over think the "why." If this site proves anything it's that the world is full of jerks. The scammers could be motivated by anything from giggles to revenge.

I agree with your earlier assertion: we're missing part of the story. We know the Davis home was called numerous times but not who answered or how they responded. Ultimately, it's just jerks being jerks.

If you don't know the number: don't engage. Don't pickup, don't talk, don't press 1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shuTzKsx4PY  He posted a couple to the forums here a couple of months ago.  One of them he gets into more of a dialog about how they work.

But that seems to go above and beyond just a jerk. Did they promise to pay and then get cold feet? Is the guy really bad at this scam and just getting really desperate? Or is the scam getting harder (thanks to the scam being well advertized) and the dude just cracked? It's not that I want to overthink it, I honestly want to know and understand this person. It's a "know thy enemy" type of thing.

The madness will stop when people STOP CALLING THEM BACK. Gatekeeper is 100% right. Blocking and ignoring makes their call useless; calling back lets them know they have a valid number, and hints that they may have a gullible target on the other end.

Their calls come with masked, spoofed, untraceable numbers with threats of warrants, prosecution and jail-time.
How many reports do we see on here where the one being called is aware it's a scam and has played the scammer along and then told the scammer to -(bleep)- off
How many reports do we see on here where the scammer calls and once their gig is up the scammer calls them everything in the book with vulgarity filled threats (including death)?
And yet we're actually having a conversation as to "why would (the scammer) go to the effort?" and what did the one being say to provoke it? REALLY?
I see no rationality into breaking down "why would they go to the effort?". One has to be a special kind of morally corrupt be a scammer and so does a psychopath. It was bound to happen and there will probably be more, even some that the press don't cover or are not reported.

"Changing the phone system enough to make calls quickly traceable again would be a major undertaking."

Sir B.,

It is more than difficult, it is impossible unless we want to isolate our phone systems in the U.S. from the rest of the world.  Such isolation would reduce the task to a massive, ALMOST impossible undertaking. ; )

Assuming we do what needs to be done to fix the system in the U.S., then the exploits can still originate overseas.  Even if the entire Western world collaborated to update their systems, we would still be vulnerable.  Unless, of course, we were prepared to sever communications ties with the rest of the world.

The roots of these problems actually pre-date VOIP and cheap, widely available, computing power.  The flaws have long been there, they simply became easier to access.  The phone system worked in the past because large, often state run (or state sized) institutions tightly controlled access to its rather ugly internal structure.  When technology opened the gate, that very insecure structure became open to the masses.  I see no way to turn the clock back on that, as it only takes an opening "somewhere on the planet" to enable the bad guys.  On the Internet, Tajikistan is no further away than Tacoma, nor Ukraine any less accessible to a tele-predator than Utah.

And because this is a global network, using shared technologies, to fix it we would have to change the whole world's telecommunication structure.  It is hard to wrap one's head around the size of that task, and the obstacles to its implementation.

So, I can sit almost anywhere in the world and not only falsify my identity and call you with impunity, I can also mess with your call traffic in ways that I prefer not to describe in a public place, lest I give bad guys ideas that (so far) they haven't looked into.  And the only solution I have personally is to block all non-whitelisted traffic, which is what I have done.

Appetizers folks interested in all this might find intriguing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_System_No._7
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-hacking-your-phone/

Want to know more?  Well the days of sneaking into the nearest Central Office and reading their manuals are well behind us (as are Captain Crunch whistles).  But there is a great deal of information on the Internet, from hacking femto-cells to get SS7 access to analysis of the massive state operated SS7 exploits that allow for the easy monitoring of all your personal phone calls, text messages, and location data from anywhere in the world.  However, no matter how great you become at "phone phreaking", you may want to know that the governments of the world are way ahead of you, and even of the bad guys, in exploiting the flaws of the telephony network. And even more than the "bad guys", our governments really don't want things fixed.  Apple was right to defend encryption, and we need more of it.

-LS-

One last tidbit for those who believe, as I do, that history is important:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee