I WANT TO MAKE IT RIGHT IMMEDIATELY. I CANNOT GO TO PRISON. I CANNOT.

January 22, 2016 10:05 AM

"They said they were going to put me on hold, and then hung up on me. But I had their #, a 20-minute drive ahead of me, and I do improv."
Comedian Dave Holmes trolls a couple of hapless IRS telephone scammers.
posted by Atom Eyes (61 comments total)

this was the highlight of my week
posted by The Whelk at 10:07 AM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]

I asked what he did before that, and how he likes the IRS gig. He said: "MR HOLMES I AM BUSY DOING YOUR PAPERWORK." I said: Jeez, of course.

Cheeky bastards!
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:10 AM on January 22, 2016 [7 favorites]

I love Dave Holmes and think he's a really good, smart guy, but I had no idea he had this level of crazy-funny in him.
posted by gladly at 10:13 AM on January 22, 2016

I have gotten SO MANY of these calls over the past couple of months and I have been trying to figure out how to respond.

This gives me some great ideas. Or possibly really bad ones - who can tell?
posted by blurker at 10:18 AM on January 22, 2016

Yes, but did he get a scammer to carve a Commador 64 out of wood?
posted by gwint at 10:21 AM on January 22, 2016 [16 favorites]

I was watching this as he was tweeting it last night, completely riveted, but I assumed Agent Paul hanging up was the end of the story. I'm glad he reported the account and routing number to the bank, and he's got a good point that if enough people waste these guys' time, they'll have less time to scam people. Because this isn't a bad, sloppy con; it's a dangerous one that preys on people's fears.
posted by Metroid Baby at 10:22 AM on January 22, 2016 [4 favorites]

I have been trying to figure out how to respond.
playact as a "sovereign citizen" and use the legal mumbo-jumbo:

Ask them if they have an American flag with gold fringe on it - tell that it means they have admiralty jurisdiction and since you're not subject to UNCLOS, you don't have to pay.

Tell them as you're not a LEGAL PERSON (all caps), but rather a "natural born human," you yourself do not have an SSN, but your LEGAL PERSON (all caps) does, but you don't want to tell them it because it would create joinder.

Tell them you don't recognize the jurisdiction of the IRS since it's a part of Northern Trust and only has jurisdiction in the DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (all caps).
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:24 AM on January 22, 2016 [76 favorites]

Read this yesterday as well, it was amazing

I was first introduced to Dave Holmes when told one of the funniest stories I've ever heard on a podcast a couple of years ago, on a live Walking the Room from Seattle. It was about when he worked at MTV and a show called "This Sucks" went... off the rails. It was the most Walking the Room thing that ever Walked the Room.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:34 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

The manor twists and turns wins the internet for the week.
posted by wotsac at 10:40 AM on January 22, 2016

Please do not tell these things to the actual IRS, who will send you quite a lot of mail and are actually very reasonable people who don't demand cash deposited into bank accounts pronto.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:41 AM on January 22, 2016 [15 favorites]

I have been trying to figure out how to respond.
Tell them you are from Windows Technical Support, and tell them you have received reports of viruses on their computer.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 10:46 AM on January 22, 2016 [75 favorites]

i love dave holmes so much. i've been a fan since the wanna be a vj days and he just gets better and better.
posted by nadawi at 10:55 AM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

Whenever I get a scam call, I never have the patience to do more than tell the person what a stupid and worthless person he or she is before I hang up on them, but I am so glad that there are people out there who take the time to both game the scammer and document it so that they can share it with the rest of us.

Also, when I get the "there is a warrant out for your arrest and the authorities are on their way to evict you from your home and seize everything you have because you owe thousands of dollars in income taxes" call, it's always an automated message.
posted by orange swan at 10:56 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Tell them you are from Windows Technical Support, and tell them you have received reports of viruses on their computer.

Alternatively, tell them you are very sorry but you cannot pay your taxes right now because all your money is in escrow for a deposed Nigerian prince, but very soon you will have plenty for them.
posted by The Bellman at 10:57 AM on January 22, 2016 [20 favorites]

A friend of mine got one of these calls and took it just seriously enough at first that the scammer got pretty convinced there'd be a payout at the end of his troubles if he just kept up the threats and harassment persistently.

So I called him back and pretended to be a Financial Crimes Investigator with the state of California and asked him a bunch of pseudo-legal questions about who he was and what he was trying to do until he got mad and hung up on me. We never heard from him again.

Anyway that's the story of my favorite LARPing experience
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:02 AM on January 22, 2016 [32 favorites]

i love dave holmes so much. i've been a fan since the wanna be a vj days and he just gets better and better.


Me too, and it's weird that my parallel reaction while reading this (along with being amuse) was thinking "These sound exactly like the group that had called me a few weeks ago. OMG wouldn't it be cool if Dave Holmes and I were being conned by the same people?"
posted by MCMikeNamara at 11:05 AM on January 22, 2016 [7 favorites]

Sometimes I think we should, as a country, just blackhole traffic from countries that allow this shit until they get off their ass and do some law enforcement. I bet it wouldn't take long.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:14 AM on January 22, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's Turkey Lurkey Time
posted by alrightokay at 11:17 AM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I would have enjoyed this more if he hadn't been on driving while talking on the phone.

I too have tried to play with the scammers, but I'm never succeeded yet. I think what I learned from this example is that the key it to appear sincerely "taken" until the very end. I think I tend to jump the gun on making their lives difficult.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:24 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

i also enjoy when scammers call lance krall.
posted by nadawi at 11:31 AM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Tell them you are from Windows Technical Support, and tell them you have received reports of viruses on their computer.

Someone actually tried just that to woman who sits near me at work a couple months ago. She was onto them right away, though, and just strung them along for a while trying to get any info that might be useful to pass on to our actual I.T. department.
posted by dnash at 11:34 AM on January 22, 2016

Tell them as you're not a LEGAL PERSON (all caps), but rather a "natural born human,

YES OFFICER, I AM A MEAT POPSICLE. AM I FREE TO GO.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:36 AM on January 22, 2016 [13 favorites]

Interesting that they had one valid piece of information: that he had an audit in 2008. That suggests they are working from more than just a generic list of stolen personal data. A lot of things will have your name and SSN, rather less will audit info. Wonder if one of the big tax prep companies had a break-in.
posted by tavella at 11:38 AM on January 22, 2016 [9 favorites]

Someone I know was scammed with the legitimately true information that they were expecting a refund from a particular company for a particular service that was not up to standard. I had scammers call me claiming to be Dell who knew what model of computer I had and everything about it. I think these scammers have taken to buying info from alienated people in big companies with access to databases.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:41 AM on January 22, 2016 [5 favorites]

Scambaiting is the most ethically sound bloodsport.

Some years back I spent a bunch of lazy mornings at work doing this one, posing as an elderly Kazakhstani chirurgeon and money counsellor. They didn't get their money which I guess made them a little sad? idk
posted by Sebmojo at 12:11 PM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

For those wondering about the knowledge of the 2008 audit, remember that data security with government agencies is more of a suggestion than a practice. There have been a number of breaches that are more likely to have been resource expeditions for this sort of fraud rather than standard identity theft.
posted by truex at 12:14 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Dave Holmes is a national treasure. Thanks for posting this.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 12:36 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I got a call the day before yesterday from the Windows technical support folks. I assumed it was legit because only Microsoft would be clueless enough to call on someone who has never owned anything but a Mac. Since 1984.

My general method of dealing with these fuckers is to tell them I'm busy changing a diaper or something but if they give me a callback number ill call within 5 minutes. A dial tone is the usual response.
posted by TedW at 12:40 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

The links on this page are gold! That makes this an admiralty thread and the mods' authority DOES NOT APPLY!

/posts Westphalia.txt
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:42 PM on January 22, 2016 [8 favorites]

Hark to the Tale of Leon Sumbitches!
posted by Navelgazer at 12:54 PM on January 22, 2016 [8 favorites]

I just got scam called myself yesterday. It was the microsoft one rather than the IRS. Turns out they don't have a manual for Windows 3.1, the guy did ask me if I had Windows 9 though, so that was nice.
posted by Carillon at 1:13 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

The links on this page are gold!

the REAL Metafilter has blue links, that's how you can tell them apart.
posted by indubitable at 1:26 PM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

Sometimes I think we should, as a country, just blackhole traffic from countries that allow this shit until they get off their ass and do some law enforcement. I bet it wouldn't take long.

Yeah, totally! It would be great if huge numbers of people couldn't communicate with their families and friends for as long as it took massive bureaucracies of state overseas to "do some law enforcement" effectively!
posted by eyesontheroad at 1:38 PM on January 22, 2016 [17 favorites]

Omg WHILE I was reading this thread I got my millionth call from "Windows"! Ugh.
posted by mothershock at 2:20 PM on January 22, 2016

I've only gotten a couple of the IRS calls, but I get at least two or three of the Windows calls each week.

I also get a very weird one pretty regularly. Does anyone else get an automated call that says "This the callback you requested about the new back brace..."

Back brace? Wha...?
posted by Thorzdad at 2:50 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yeah, totally! It would be great if huge numbers of people couldn't communicate with their families and friends for as long as it took massive bureaucracies of state overseas to "do some law enforcement" effectively!

Well, maybe that's a little harsh (although I bet just the threat would be enough) but sometimes I do think that phone call, mail, and websites from known scam hotspots should have automatic warning messages added.
posted by Mitrovarr at 3:23 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

This was awesome, thank you. I especially like how he encouraged readers to waste the scammers time so they can't find a victim. I get calls like this all the time but I know they are wrong but some poor person might not. I had an especially evil one recently where I was told that someone in my household had been in a car accident. That could have terrified someone. I just told the caller they were being ridiculous because unless the cats were stealing cars while I was out, none of us had been in an accident and the caller was mistaken, good bye. But how awful if you had family out on the road, running late, not responding to your messages or whatever? Just so cruel.
posted by kitten magic at 4:16 PM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

My aunt fell for the Windows thing recently. The amount of work they had to put in both to getting the viruses off their computer plus talking to the credit card company was seriously awful.

It's hard to believe she bought it, but then again they still use AOL, so...
posted by mudpuppie at 4:20 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

We just tell the Windows tech scammers that we don't have a computer.
posted by pushing paper and bottoming chairs at 5:27 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've always wanted to set up a virtual machine loaded with viruses to get the 'Windows' people into just to string them along. I know someone has posted on SOMEWHERE on the internet about doing that many years ago.
posted by Twain Device at 5:39 PM on January 22, 2016

Where are these people getting your numbers??? I've *never* gotten any of these types of calls.
posted by Jacqueline at 5:50 PM on January 22, 2016 [4 favorites]

My number is listed (it's the default) but I figure they probably work their way through batches of numbers. Our numbers are in the format of XYYY ZZZZ where X stays the same for the vast majority of a region, YYY specifies a more local area and if you work your way through all the ZZZZs you'll eventually call everyone in a region.

They never seem to know my name, they always speak in general terms.
posted by kitten magic at 5:59 PM on January 22, 2016

See, all I ever get is a robot voice that tells me to enter my sixteen digit debit card number to reactivate it.

So far it doesn't like


1234567890123456
0000000000000000
5555555555555555
1357913579135791


I want a live one!
posted by tilde at 6:27 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

> We just tell the Windows tech scammers that we don't have a computer.

Next time try telling them you don't have a phone. Be very earnest about it. If they ask you how they could be talking to you when you don't have a phone, say that you are just as confused about it as they are, and are actually starting to feel a bit worried.
posted by benito.strauss at 6:28 PM on January 22, 2016 [52 favorites]

Like Jacqueline, how is it I’ve never got one of these calls, or any kind of scam? We get the occasional sales call from a legitimate company we already deal with, that’s it.
posted by bongo_x at 6:44 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

You people answer your phones, don't you? I never answer mine. It saves a lot of trouble. Of course, our voice mail message also says, "Please take this number off your call list." Every couple of weeks I clear off the voice mail without listening to it beyond the first two syllables.
posted by Peach at 7:03 PM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

Next time try telling them you don't have a phone.

This was my go-to response back when the most common scam was companies trying to get you to switch your long-distance carrier.

"How are you talking if you don't have a phone?"

"Well, YOU called ME."

Shockingly, a few of them believed it.

You people answer your phones, don't you? I never answer mine. It saves a lot of trouble.

In the future, I think this will be everyone's default behavior. Ignore calls or emails unless they're from known contacts.
posted by mmoncur at 7:55 PM on January 22, 2016 [7 favorites]

That's my default behavior now!
posted by snwod at 8:13 PM on January 22, 2016 [5 favorites]

I want a live one!

There's a simple algorithm to determine if a given credit card number is valid. (Also, 1 and 0 aren't valid first digits.)

In conclusion, next time try 5555 5555 5555 5557.
posted by neckro23 at 12:27 AM on January 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

I work at an Apple specialist store on Cape Cod. I proposed changing the name of our store to "Neither Apple Computer Nor The IRS Ever Call You!", as in ring, ring "Hi, this is Neither Apple Computer &ct...."

Not just old people that fall for it either. I think the only answer is education, big P.R. campaigns, starve 'em out, the swine.
posted by Divine_Wino at 1:28 AM on January 23, 2016

I get these but they are from Agent Patrick Johnson with an Indian accent. I've always assumed their success rate must be low because they are too stupid to realize that in the US it is completely plausible for someone with an Infian name and accent to work at the IRS.
posted by double bubble at 5:31 AM on January 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm surprised there's not more scamming of UK nationals from Indian call centres. They could just play it straight:

"So where are you calling from?"
"Southall."
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 6:49 AM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Where are these people getting your numbers??? I've *never* gotten any of these types of calls.

The volume of these calls skyrocketed when I started handling all of my mother's business, and had to supply people (doctors, nursing home, insurance co., bank, etc.) with my home number. Many of them specifically ask for her by name. I assume one of these businesses sell their phone database and it gets re-sold over and over.

I recently got a cold call from a "Forensic Auditor" claiming to have uncovered a pile of money belonging to my mom, and all I had to do was sign a contract with them to get the specifics. After the phone call, a letter showed up a few days later. They had mom's name, her sister's name, my name and my brother's name.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:05 AM on January 23, 2016

I get these but they are from Agent Patrick Johnson with an Indian accent. I've always assumed their success rate must be low because they are too stupid to realize that in the US it is completely plausible for someone with an Indian name and accent to work at the IRS.

People who create these scams make them unconvincing on purpose because they want the people who are too with it to be fooled to bail early on. The way Microsoft Windows scammers identify themselves as being from "the Windows corporation" is an example of this. Anyone who knows anything about computers knows that Windows is a product, not a corporation, and the scammers have surely been told so, but they keep styling themselves that way in order to weed out people who are too sophisticated to fall for the scam. Last year I got a call saying someone had purchased two pairs of shoes and a CD walkman on Amazon with my Visa and were those my charges? I suspect that was a deliberate choice too, because my first thought was, who the hell buys CD walkmans these days?
posted by orange swan at 10:00 AM on January 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Every couple of weeks I clear off the voice mail without listening to it beyond the first two syllables.

But if you do that people keep leaving you messages. If you leave your box full then they can never leave a message and thus never claim "we left you a message" as if that's an actual legitimate way to contact someone or pass along important information in the 21st century.
posted by Jacqueline at 11:01 AM on January 23, 2016

They keep leaving me messages anyway. The voice mail I get is ALL robocalls.
posted by Peach at 1:15 PM on January 23, 2016

I keep asking the Windows people for assistance with my Ubuntu Linux machine. They have not been helpful at all.
posted by ericales at 1:32 PM on January 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

"They keep leaving me messages anyway. The voice mail I get is ALL robocalls."

No, what I'm saying is let your voicemail inbox fill up and then never check/clear it again. Then anyone who tries to leave a message in the future will just hear a recording that your voicemail is full.
posted by Jacqueline at 1:59 PM on January 23, 2016

Yeah, but then I wouldn't get the robocalls from the city telling me trash collection is one day late . . . which I guess I could find out by checking the news. But I don't think I'm capable of doing that. I'm an "inbox zero" kind of person and it would prey on my mind.
posted by Peach at 2:42 PM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Run your phone number through Google Voice. You'll get a transcript of any voicemails in your email, and while they are often a bit mangled, it's easy to tell the real from the phone spam.
posted by tavella at 3:02 PM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I would bet most of the targeted ones are buying access into legitimate databases as a third party (there are enough places willing to sell data that hacking isn't necessary), and the accountants aren't checking who numbered corp 2345324 is. The other option is that they are getting access to browsing histories / addresses / numbers via sketchy apps that are basically spyware.
posted by benzenedream at 11:00 PM on January 28, 2016