Calls from the "IRS" - on my cell phone!
Right from the IRS website:
Do not give out any information. Hang up immediately.
Contact TIGTA to report the call. Use their “IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting” web page or call 800-366-4484.
Report it to the Federal Trade Commission. ...
If you think you might owe taxes, call the IRS directly at 800-829-1040.
I just got the IRS call on my main line. Sounds like the IRS has a lawsuit pending against me - I didn't catch the whole number to call back, but it started with 618. Caller id has it as 618 300-2320 coming from Makanda, IL.
Yes, I am being sued by the IRS as well. Each call is from a different place for with a different amount I owe. Today's call informed me that if I don't pay by 7:30 PM today I am under arrest. Harsh!
mem said:
Yes, I am being sued by the IRS as well. Each call is from a different place for with a different amount I owe. Today's call informed me that if I don't pay by 7:30 PM today I am under arrest. Harsh!
Don't worry. I am sure we can raise the money for your bail right here on MOL. 
LOST said:
mem said:
Yes, I am being sued by the IRS as well. Each call is from a different place for with a different amount I owe. Today's call informed me that if I don't pay by 7:30 PM today I am under arrest. Harsh!
Don't worry. I am sure we can raise the money for your bail right here on MOL.
That's gonna be tough as it appears that MOST of us are going to the slammer if we don't pay up..
Getting SO MANY of these annoying calls, on landline and on my cell and my husband's cell as well. Always from different numbers, so blocking doesn't really help. They are robocalls with robotic voices, so you don't even have the psychic satisfaction of yelling at them. Guess our area will need its own site-specific jail to house all of us.
Lots of people are getting these, and there is nothing anyone can do except beware. It is TRIVIAL to spoof caller ID, so the scam can come from hundreds or thousands of numbers every day, constantly changing. Caller ID is not a way to trace a call any more, if it ever was.
For $75.00 I will be glad to help you all stay out of jail. Get the phone number and address of where to send the money. Give me the $75.00 and I promise you won't go to jail.
Satisfaction guaranteed. You won't go to jail.
Just for funsies, I called the number that they left on my answering machine. When my call was answered (by a non-native English speaker), I stated that I was doubtful that I had actually been contacted by the IRS. The person inquired, 'what would it take to convince you?' I responded that I would need to receive some official mail at my home address, whereupon the person completely abandoned all pretense of impersonating the IRS and resorted to an obscenity. ('Can I f____ your p____?') While that was pretty disgusting, at least I haven't gotten another of these calls!
With some of these IRS calls, if you call the number back you may incur charges to your phone bill. Be on the lookout....
conandrob240 said:
why are they allowed to get away with this kind of fraud?
dave says they are outside the US. Probably true in most cases. This kind of scam can be pulled off with a computer and some software, and they can be anywhere. Imagine someone put up an unmanned lemonade stand with a jar and an honors system. And imagine that there was no lemonade but just a promise to deliver some lemonade in the future. You can't tell who put the stand up, but you know people are putting money in and are unable to take it back out. What do you do? OK, now the stand has moved into cyberspace. Now what?
I can write an app that dials phone numbers sequentially, saying "Pay your IRS debt by submitting your payment to Website X. You can remit through paypal or your credit card." How can you stop me? I can host Website X in some overseas country. I can even set the outbound caller ID to a number similar to the number my app is calling so the receiving party might figure it is worth picking up and answering the call.
Does this help?
conandrob240 said:
why are they allowed to get away with this kind of fraud?
They are not allowed to get away with this kind of fraud. At the present time, there is no effective way to stop it. As long as the calls continue to bring in revenue (pun intended), they will continue to be placed.
iwasmim said:
Just for funsies, I called the number that they left on my answering machine. When my call was answered (by a non-native English speaker), I stated that I was doubtful that I had actually been contacted by the IRS. The person inquired, 'what would it take to convince you?' I responded that I would need to receive some official mail at my home address, whereupon the person completely abandoned all pretense of impersonating the IRS and resorted to an obscenity. ('Can I f____ your p____?') While that was pretty disgusting, at least I haven't gotten another of these calls!
That's pretty much what happened to me about six days ago. I called the number, and some guy told me he "loved" me and he wanted to "f---" me. That about sums it up. All the credibility of a certain presidential candidate I've seen.
A podcaster I listen to got these calls. He called them back a few times and played along to see where it would go. Pretty crazy. They told him to drive to a Target and buy gift cards. They were then going to tell him where to send them.
I don't answer calls on my cell phone from numbers I don't recognize. If it's important, they'll leave a message. I have called back a scam number--from my work phone because it goes through a pool number and is not associated with my direct line.
I don't answer calls at all from numbers I don't recognize but that's not really a "solution". And these guys have been relentless calling up to 20x a day- when you pick up and ask to be removed from caller list, they are rude and obscene and the calls continue
I know it sounds ridiculous but about a month or so ago one of my individual clients, with a small business, received one of these phone calls. He called and texted me and by the time I got back to him 15 minutes later was on his way to Western Union to wire money to the fraudulent callers. They were very aggressive on the phone with him. I talked him off the ledge and told him in no uncertain terms to not pay, not do anything but hang up. He was concerned that they were going to issue a warrant for his arrest within the hour.
After I convinced him to do nothing he calmed down but he was pretty shaken up.
We had a pretty good laugh about it when I called him later that evening to see if he was in jail, but it really isn't funny that they have actually been pretty successful with this scam.
Yeah, this all got a lot less fun since the calls started coming from robots. Although it can be amusing to give very unusual answers until the bot finally says, "thank you for your time" and hangs up.
Some pro-life bot got really confused last week when I told it I think abortion should be legal up to age 21.
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I keep getting these calls from these guys with heavy accents telling me that if I don't pay thousands of tax dollars to the "IRS" that I supposedly owe I will get arrested by that evening.
Anyone else getting these calls? where's the best place to report this?