Five arrested in IRS impersonation scam

ForumPhishing and scam calls
  • +7
    byron
    | 3 replies
    Wow!!  Every once in awhile, good news on the scammer front.
    http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/05/2 ... -scam/84874934/
    If the above URL is no good or you (rightly) don't trust URLs that anonymous people post, then just "google" the subject of this message, "Five arrested in IRS impersonation scam."
  • -2
    Leave it at that
    The one point I find very irritating about this story is the 5 crooks involved were Cuban Nationals living in Miami.
  • +3
    Norm replies to byron
    | 1 reply
    Read that this morning on MSN. Apparently the 5 were operating out of the Miami area. Sadly, it's just the tip of the iceberg as far as this scam is concerned, but at least it's a start.
  • +4
    TelcoKitty
    | 2 replies
    Excerpt from the article:

    Quote:
    "The arrests stemmed in part from an Oct. 2015 call to a fraud hotline established by the Senate Special Committee on Aging, TIGTA said. The caller reported that her husband, after receiving a purported IRS arrest threat and demand for a nearly $2,000 payment, drove to a local Walmart store to wire the money.

    The distraught victim crashed his car while en route, but was so worried that he left the accident scene to wire the money, said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chairs the Senate panel."

    It's sad to think that the Senate might require physically injured (not just monetarily injured) senior citizens before they will act on these phone scammers.
  • +2
    Ken replies to TelcoKitty
    It's sad to see how scared the American people are of the IRS
  • +1
    Angry as Hell replies to TelcoKitty
    Your last comment is sad but true..
  • +1
    Fed Up replies to byron
    Thank you for updating us on this. Thankfully I never received a call from these scammers. Glad they were finally caught.
  • +1
    William replies to Norm
    They have icebergs in Miami ?

    All of the fake-IRS caller reports I have seen on 800notes talk about the caller having a mid-eastern accent, not a Spanish-language accent. Kind of hard to investigate calls coming from the other side of the globe. I wonder how many India-born scammers are in the USA and Canada making calls, or masterminding the operations.
  • +3
    Sir Bedevere
    Now that's a fascinating question. The Indian "IRS" calls may well be run from within the U.S.

    Though the people on the phone banks for this scam usually know little or nothing about what the IRS does and how they work, whoever set it up probably does. It wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't fairly easy to hire a phone bank in India for this scam without ever leaving your easy chair in the U.S.
  • 0
    Cellphone user
    I'm glad they're cracking down on these criminals. Fortunately, my blocking app has blocked these scammers from calling my cellphone.
  • 0
    John R
    I got a couple of calls from these phony "IRS" people (in NJ) today and to call them back. The girl sounded American to me. As soon as I heard the spiel, I knew it was a scam.
  • +1
    Rita
    Were the faux Cuban IRS agents targeting fellow Cubans? People might be more likely to fall for a scam if they can understand who's calling versus an East Indian who is very hard to understand and also definitely sounds like she/he is calling from offshore.
  • +5
    Alfalfa
    Great. Now, if only they could nab the remaining 999,999 criminals making the calls. But, as Norm has said, at least they are doing something.
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