I just received a message, saying it was from the IRS, and that they have been trying to contact me, and are filing a lawsuit. Not that they’re auditing me, not that I owe them $X, not that they’re questioning me. No, they are filing a lawsuit. I called the number, and when I questioned they guy’s identity, he hung up.
I did a reverse phone look-up, and it was traced to a “Level 3” cell phone in Washington State. There were several comments by people, saying they had received the same message, and this is a scam to get personal information.
I must say, I’m relieved. I’d rather be the recipient of an unsuccessful scam, than be sued by the IRS.
We got one on our answering machine. Interesting that you traced the number, though.
The person who left the message had a thick Indian accent, though the number was in the US.
When we got calls from the Windows company I said nasty things about the guy’s mother. Really pissed him off. My wife has a whistle by the phone for the next caller.
I get similar calls threatening that I will be served legal papers tomorrow. It’s amazing the stupidity of that statement. I hope not many people get caught by that one. I’ve had to block several numbers in my cell phone thanks to those idiots.
I received two such calls last week. Since all of my calls go the answering machine, I wasn’t able to question the caller. If the IRS want to talk to me, I want the Willy Nelson treatment. Helicopters and armed accountants.
The IRS phone scams have been sweeping my local area for months. I monitor the daily police dispatch reports and I see several reports each day. Only to land lines and the successful targets are usually elderly people.
And it works, that’s why they keep doing it. They will get a lot of failures but they also get very aggressive with their threats and that sends otherwise sane people scrambling to stay out of perceived trouble.
The IRS will never initiate contact with you by phone. You would get notified by mail from a verifiable IRS office with persons to contact about your case, if there is one. They are not aggressive, if you do in fact owe money and set up a small payment plan they will leave you the hell alone, even if it takes years to pay off.
I owed the IRS a couple thousand a few years ago, set up an on-line payment plan with them, got to choose the amount I wanted to pay, I think $50 a month, and never heard from them again. I actually had to call them after I quit receiving statements to find out that I had paid them off. Very polite people once you acknowledge that you owe the money and start paying.
These scam artists are trying to scare grandma into running out to get a prepaid money card so they can take her to the cleaners. The real IRS does not work like that.
I’ve gotta admit, panic [sic] ensued for a moment, before I realized the IRS wouldn’t just file a lawsuit against me, totally out of the blue (aside from the fact that they’d have no reason to). But I can easily understand how a gullible person would take the call seriously.
I did manage to, once again, call back the Indian guy . . . this time, explaining to him why his mother doesn’t know who his father is.
Somebody tried this with me regarding damages from a traffic accident. The fact that I hadn’t had one helped a lot; the claim was completely non-credible.
He went on at some length about the lawsuit he was going to file.
I ended up saying, “Whatever. File the lawsuit. When I receive it, I’ll get a lawyer.” Why would a victim directly call the defendant? Made no sense then, and, with these IRS frauds, it makes no sense now.
That’s how Fred Phelps got his start. He’d threaten his neighbors with personal injury suits (I fell on your sidewalk and damaged my knee) and then offer to settle out of court for 5 or 10 grand. It got to the point where no judge in Topeka would hear any personal injury case where Phelps was representing himself as the plaintiff.
Did this clown even know your name? When my caller ID says something suspicious I never answer with my name, which allows me to test them. They always fail.
I once asked the Windows Company guy what OS I had - he hung up right away.
I owed once due to my tax return being lost in the mail, penalties and interest accrued.
Called the IRS about the debt. They were very understanding. They adjusted my debt down and accepted a modest payment plan. It was as pleasant as it could be.
My name, Jose Jimenez. I am calling this number to tell you that if you do not call me back, you will have to go before Magistrate Judge for felonious action from IRS.
That was yesterday. Three times. Okay, it wasn’t Jose Jimenez (Bill Dana). Just really sounded like him. Cracked me up so much I couldn’t hear the message the first time. Magistrate, huh? I’m in California. Do we have any of these. About three weeks ago, we got another one telling me my house was being auctioned off as we spoke.:smack:
My father loved to tell me his favorite scam from the “good old days”. To clarify, he was a newspaper reporter in the 1930’s not a scam artist!
He told me about the classified ads that people would put in the paper saying:
LAST CHANCE! Send $5 to: address in an adjacent city.
Thats the whole ad. No information about what the last chance was.
Dad says that is one of the major reasons mail fraud is a federal crime-the ads were so successful the only way to stop them was to prevent the use of the US mails.
The newspapers apparently couldn’t/wouldn’t refuse to run the ads.
Such a classic scam. Couldn’t be simpler, and always worked.
One of my favorite scams is from an old Alfred Hitchcock episode. When I say “favorite” I don’t mean that it’s a good thing (it’s a scam so of course it’s not good), just that it’s clever. I don’t know if anyone’s actually ever done it or if it would really work, but It’s diabolical.
