An IRS impersonation scam is a class of telecommunications fraud and

scam A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have def ...

which targets American

taxpayers A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or n ...

by pretending to be

Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory ta ...

(IRS) collection officers. The scammers operate by placing disturbing official-sounding calls to unsuspecting citizens, threatening them with arrest and frozen assets if thousands of dollars are not paid immediately, usually via

gift card A gift card also known as gift certificate in North America, or gift voucher or gift token in the UK is a prepaid stored-value money card, usually issued by a retailer or bank, to be used as an alternative to cash for purchases within a parti ...

s or money orders. According to the IRS, over 1,029,601 Americans have received threatening calls, and $29,100,604 has been reported lost to these call scams as of March 2016. The problem has been assigned to the

Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is an office in the United States Federal government. It was established in January 1999 in accordance with the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 (RRA 98) ...

. The scammers often request payment in the form of

gift cards A gift card also known as gift certificate in North America, or gift voucher or gift token in the UK is a prepaid stored-value money card, usually issued by a retailer or bank, to be used as an alternative to cash for purchases within a parti ...

such as

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android (operating sys ...

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...

cards, wire transfer,

MoneyGram MoneyGram International, Inc. is an American cross-border Peer-to-peer, P2P payments and electronic funds transfer, money transfer company based in the United States with headquarters in Dallas, Dallas, Texas. It has an operations center in St. L ...

, or credit card. , several people from India have been arrested for impersonating IRS employees.

The United Kingdom

Variations on this scam have targeted British taxpayers, pretending to be from

HM Revenue and Customs HM Revenue and Customs (His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, or HMRC) is a non-ministerial government department, non-ministerial Departments of the United Kingdom Government, department of the His Majesty's Government, UK Government responsible fo ...

(HMRC). Sometimes the scammers use telephone calls, sometimes SMS text messages, and sometimes emails. Versions include: *The scammers threaten a lawsuit by HMRC to recover money allegedly owed. *The scammers tell people that they are due a tax rebate, and use this to trick them into disclosing their account and personal details.

Canada

Another variation similarly targets Canadians by impersonating the

Canada Revenue Agency The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA; ; ) is the revenue service of the Canadian federal government, and most provincial and territorial governments. The CRA collects taxes, administers tax law and policy, and delivers benefit programs and tax credit ...

and utilizing aggressive fear tactics, with at least 60,000 Canadian residents filing complaints from 2013 to 2018.

Response by companies

In response to a modus operandi by scammers where they coax victims into buying prepaid cards or gift cards for online services, companies such as

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

, along with the

Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction ov ...

, have posted advisories warning customers over the illicit use of gift cards by scammers, and not to give out the code to anyone they do not know. Retailers and supermarkets have also followed suit by putting up similar warnings on prepaid and gift card sections.

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

has also warned of the dangers of these scams by advising customers not to use Amazon.com Gift Cards for payment outside of Amazon or its affiliated properties and not to use gift cards for other retailers and brands outside of the intended brand.

has also published a similar warning on their website.

References

External links

IRS primer video

IRS Tax Scam Consumer Alert
Confidence tricks Fraud in the United States Fraud in India Internal Revenue Service {{Crime-stub

The United Kingdom

Canada

Response by companies

See also

References

External links