The IRS scam has received much
publicity over the last year or so. Recently, an Iowa radio station took a call
from an IRS scammer and recorded eleven minutes of his pitch. If you have the
time, you should listen to it.
This scammer (it actually was a
team of two) stuck to his script. But the key was that he tried to isolate the
victim until he received his money. The victim was told that the process would
take an hour. The victim had to follow “rules and regulations” to “resolve” his
case. They included:
·
The victim needed to stay on the phone, he could
not hang up.
·
The scammer claimed to require payment through
the EFTPS, a federal payment system that allows taxpayers to pay their taxes to
the federal government from their bank accounts (www.eftps.gov).
·
The victim should not disclose the case with
anyone, family, friends, co-workers, because there is a danger that he will
lose his job.
Other scammers may use slightly
different techniques, but it is clear that the scammer wanted control of the
victim by requiring the victim to stay on the phone and wanted to isolate the
victim by convincing him not to tell anyone. The scammer claimed to use a
legitimate federal funds transfer program for payment. While the recording did
not reveal the actual procedures that the scammer demanded, clearly the money
was not going to the federal government.
To listen to the recording, go
to,
KSIB, Creston, Iowa:
An additional write up of the
recording,
WHO TV, Des Moines, Iowa:
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