This quality of uncertainty
November 25, 2015 5:24 PM   Subscribe

How I Fell Face First for an Epic IRS Scam: I received a call on my home phone recently from someone who identified himself as Officer Jason Dean with the Investigative Bureau of the Department of Treasury. He said an arrest warrant had been issued in my name for failure to respond to IRS Notice CP503 — a third reminder — informing me that I owed $5,347 in back taxes. He said my home and cell phones were being traced and I should not attempt to leave the city.

If anyone should have known better, it was me. I’m a somewhat experienced adult, with more than one degree from an Ivy League university. In my career as a journalist, I’ve researched the ways our minds fall for tricks like this. I’ve even reported on scams that cheated people out of big down payments on houses and tricked others into buying previously wrecked cars. But the truth is that I fell for this scam — almost completely.

Related: Scams, Schemes & Swindles: A Review of Consumer Financial Fraud Research (pdf). The IRS Dirty Dozen List of Tax Scams for the 2015 Filing Season.
posted by mandolin conspiracy (77 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
The IRS doesn't have the manpower to answer their phones, much less send actual humans after you for $5k.
posted by ryanrs at 5:43 PM on November 25, 2015 [27 favorites]


Having a hard time believing this story is true as written. Scams exist, and sick/elderly people are preyed upon. But this account feels so perfect and breathless, as if it's imagining how an otherwise intelligent person would react. The "multiple Ivy League degrees" detail triggers my "look at me" spidey-sense.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:45 PM on November 25, 2015 [8 favorites]


Good for her for putting herself out there with a potentially quite embarrassing story.

Other than the occasional "Windows Technical Support" I've never received one of these calls.

If I do though, I hope I remember the advice someone gave me years ago:

Get It In Writing

If someone tells you owe them, get it in writing.
If they say you won something, get it in writing.
If they're from the government/the bank/the police/Microsoft/whoever, if it's legit, they'll be willing to write it down, to make a record.

If they won't, then walk away.
posted by madajb at 5:46 PM on November 25, 2015 [43 favorites]


Good grief.

“We’re only calling you as a courtesy to inform you that you will be arrested and charged with failure to meet federal taxation requirements, malicious conduct, and theft by deception. You will be arrested within the next two hours and held in custody for six months pending an investigation.”

She believed this utter nonsense? Face palm. I like the malicious conduct charge wedged in there. They might as well have said "being a big meany".
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 5:49 PM on November 25, 2015 [10 favorites]


She's putting herself down in an attempt to help other people and/or make the story more interesting. If you read through the article, it looks less like she believed the scammer and more like she went along with it on the off-chance that it could be true.
posted by subdee at 5:53 PM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


Every once in a great while, one of our clients will get a call from an extortionist, or a vengeful ex, or someone of that nature, claiming to be from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and saying that someone is coming to arrest them. Of course it's scary, but we tell them to just think rationally for a moment: if someone actually wants to come get you, they won't call you beforehand. If they know where you are, why would they want to risk you going on the run? It would only create more work for them.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:55 PM on November 25, 2015 [27 favorites]


Having a hard time believing this story is true as written. Scams exist, and sick/elderly people are preyed upon. But this account feels so perfect and breathless, as if it's imagining how an otherwise intelligent person would react. The "multiple Ivy League degrees" detail triggers my "look at me" spidey-sense.

Seems entirely plausible to me. Unless you have been scammed, then you don't understand how easy it is to be scammed. It's social brain hacking, and it relies on shortcircuiting your brain with your emotions.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:56 PM on November 25, 2015 [10 favorites]


I'm only aware of Canadian versions of this scam. But here's a key point to be aware of, that I suspect is valid for the US as well: You will always know if you owe the government money and they are actively trying to collect. The reason you will know this because they will just take whatever money you have. Subsection 224(1) of the Income Tax Act means that the CRA can empty out your bank account, garnishee your wages, or intercept your accounts receivable with a letter.
posted by Grimgrin at 6:02 PM on November 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


Don't answer phone calls from people you don't know, even if you have the vague feeling that it could be important. Had a family member telling me recently to answer a harassing caller (25 calls over just two days, many many more in the month before that, before changing my number), with a UK number. Don't do that, ever.
posted by raysmj at 6:03 PM on November 25, 2015


I received one of these calls. Hung up and 2 seconds of googling revealed it to be a scam. At the top of the search results was a warning page at irs.gov.

I've had disputes with the IRS before so this call made me paranoid for the two seconds until I read the search results. I just wish people would make such a search second nature when in doubt about a call's claims.

And if anyone has elderly people in your life, train them to call you first before writing a check. My mum had trouble using google on her own but she knew I could find out for her. Saved her a few thousand when she was a little gullible about something.
posted by honestcoyote at 6:07 PM on November 25, 2015 [8 favorites]


In case anyone reading this doesn't know, caller ID is meaningless and can be set to anything by anyone.

And if you're going to be arrested, you sure as shit won't be notified about it in advance.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:08 PM on November 25, 2015 [16 favorites]


Saying "I would never fall for a scam" is a way to insure that I will one day. This particular one, as described, no. But I'm sure there are scams out there I would be vulnerable to. Hopefully I won't run into one.
posted by emjaybee at 6:08 PM on November 25, 2015 [20 favorites]


I do taxes. What these things play on is how mind-bendingly scared people are of the IRS. We have to reassure them all the time that even when you owe back taxes and stuff, the IRS is one of the easiest creditors to deal with. The interest rates are not insane, and it's easy to get a reasonable payment plan, and even when you've done incredibly stupid stuff, they take forever and a half to get around to actually seizing anything. And we're talking there about things like failure to deposit payroll taxes, which is an order of magnitude worse than just screwing up your income taxes.

But people are terrified. So we get people all the time who come in and they haven't even opened the envelope the IRS sent them. They're totally freaked out. And then it turns out it's a notice that the IRS adjusted their last return because they forgot to give us a 1099 form and now they owe, like, two hundred bucks. For that, people who make six figures will get too scared to even open their mail.

I think this country's real problem with tax avoidance isn't avoiding paying, it's avoiding thinking about. It's handing everything off to the accountant or to Turbotax and then acting like whatever happens after that point is an act of God. When you are that pants-wettingly scared of the IRS, then you make yourself vulnerable to anybody who wants to pretend to be the IRS and can even vaguely pass for knowing the lingo. But you also make yourself vulnerable to tons of expensive mistakes because you just dump a box of receipts off at your accountant's office every year and hope it all goes away. Have a healthy respect for the taxing authorities, yes, absolutely. But don't be afraid. Your rational brain can spot a scam, but fear like that is the mind-killer.
posted by Sequence at 6:08 PM on November 25, 2015 [122 favorites]


Having a hard time believing this story is true as written.

Haven't read it but the details given here are bang on with a similar scam that has been operating in Canada for the past few months. I'm on a mobile, or I'd see if I can find the video but my local news last night featured a story of someone who got the scam call, knew what it was, and recorded the shitbag making his threats. It was nothing but straight-up bullying.

I'll see if I can find a video link when I can sit down with a real computer.
posted by nubs at 6:23 PM on November 25, 2015


My dad (age 72) and my grandma (98 when she died) both have gotten MORE THAN ONE "Whoops, underpayment on your return, please remit (random number between 1000 and 5000) to the IRS" letters. Each time, we've sent back a polite, certified-mail response: "So sorry about that. Please explain where the error is located on the return in question and we will work with you to rectify this situation." And every time we've sent that damn letter, the IRS has slunk back into its cave and completely dropped the issue.

I'm not saying it's a ploy, but it appears to happen to folks who report a decent amount of gross income and have a fairly complicated (ours feature incomes from multiple subchapter-S corps as well as some LLPs), self-prepared return that is for a person over the age of fifty.
posted by which_chick at 6:28 PM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


the IRS is one of the easiest creditors to deal with

Every IRS employee I've dealt with has been competent and professional. Basically you are dealing with helpful, educated, well-trained people in an organization that is very understaffed due to budget cuts. So it's this interesting mix of great and terrible. Plus you probably only deal with them in unfortunate circumstances, so that colors things a bit, too.
posted by ryanrs at 6:29 PM on November 25, 2015 [21 favorites]


One of my co-workers almost fell for the scam. She'd just finished paying off back taxes after a protracted divorce days before the call.

Luckily she wasn't talking quietly on the phone. When she suddenly made for the door to get money from the bank, I physically blocked her path and repeated "IT'S A SCAM" until she started paying attention and the caller hung up.

And this is a contracts administrator with multiple Master's degrees.
posted by notsnot at 6:36 PM on November 25, 2015 [17 favorites]


Oh wow. This so closely mirrors a situation my co-worker was in that I partook in, that I'd almost think she wrote it. I wrote all this before reading the article, but decided to check to see if I wasn't rehashing. I kind of am, so, fair warning.

I was back at my desk working through a company-wide meeting when one of the new employees came back up to the floor, on the phone, looking pretty shocked. While I was minding my own business, I could also tell she was very distressed, and I figured that when she got off the phone, I'd see if everything was alright. Maybe someone was telling her about a sudden death in the family. At one point, she apologized profusely, took another call, accidentally hung up, and called right back, apologizing more. It was clearly bad news.

After a few minutes, she walks over and between sobs, asks for help. Sure! Is everything okay? Are you alright? "It's the IRS. Shh. I told them I'm in the car, on my way to the ATM. They say I owe them $5,431 and 17 cents. I don't know what to do."

~_^

I immediately google "IRS Scam" and have her read it while she's got this guy on mute. It's beginning to dawn on her that things are not as they seem. I ask her to hang up the phone, because I'm 100% sure it's a scam. As ryanrs said in the first comment, ain't no one at the IRS got time for aggressively chasing down tax money. But she's genuinely scared, and isn't sure it's real. "We're in Philadelphia, tell him you're going to walk to the IRS office and deal with it there." Not good enough. I offer a few other suggestions, because I loooooove phone scammers, but she's still pretty stunned.

I'm not normally so forward, but I tell her that I'm going to disconnect her headset and take the phone now. I listen for a bit and there's this guy yelling, just spewing about how she's going to be in big trouble and the police are coming to arrest her if she doesn't wire the money, and it's at this point that I announce myself as Officer [Leviathant]. Of course, just as he is not working for the IRS, I am not any kind of officer. He asks me to spell my name. I make sure he's got a pen and paper, and check that he's ready, and I spell [Leviathant]. C-O-C-K-S-U-C-K-E-R. "Oh you think you're funny? Can't you spell? Are you in elementary school? What's your phone number, detective? You idiot. Fuck you, smart guy. What's your name. Tell me your name." I'm having fun with it, but man, this guy is full-on, and even though I know it's a bunch of crap, I'm starting to get agitated. He asks for my co-worker, I tell him he's talking to me now. "Just give me her credit card number and we'll settle this." Okay, sure. Are you ready to write it down? Ready? Okay, it's a VISA. It expires in 2027. Yes, that's right. Ready for the number? 4111. 1111. 11-- At this point, someone else on their side unmutes to tell me that I'm a stupid asshole motherfucker, and then mutes and goes back to listening to the other guy chew me out.

I end up telling him the address of the bar I work above, because this IRS officer is telling me he's going to come down from New York and kick my ass himself. I ask him when he's going to be there, and he says it'll be 45 minutes, and I tell him that I'm looking forward to it, and I'll be there all night. (It should be noted, I am the furthest thing from a tough guy, and was going home, not to the bar.) He refocuses, asking where [co-worker] is. At this point I just hang up.

She tells me that first she gets a call and it's a woman on the phone, who puts her on hold, and then this "IRS" guy shows up and goes on full blast about how she owes thousands of dollars in back taxes from last year. She knows this isn't true, because she actually didn't do any work last year, but he also knows her old phone numbers and addresses. Then, while this is going on, she gets an incoming call. From 911. (heh.) She takes the call, and it's Officer so-and-so on dispatch to come pick her up if she doesn't pay the IRS what she owes them. Back to the IRS guy, and around this time is where I'd picked up.

I think the most important factor, aside from the impressively professional berating, is that she is here on a green card, and she's young and a bit inexperienced. When I posted about this on Facebook, a friend of mine said several of his coworkers got the same call, all immigrants. And many of them come from countries where you just don't mess around with the government when the government comes after you.

There's a whole team of people involved in this process, and they are really good at what they do. I'm as cool headed as they come, and just talking to them, knowing full well they were harmless to me, I still got a fight-or-flight adrenaline rush.

I kind of want them to cold call me some day. I thought that if I wasted their time, they'd call it quits, but they're in it to win it, and it would be AMAZING to record the interaction. However, from what I've read about past behavior, they will go beyond just being nasty on the phone to you. Any information they get about you will be used against you. They will call and harass your employer, or your family. Anything it takes to get that five grand. It's easy money for them, and they sadistically enjoy their work-from-home job.
posted by Leviathant at 6:42 PM on November 25, 2015 [77 favorites]


I'm not saying it's a ploy, but it appears to happen to folks who report a decent amount of gross income and have a fairly complicated (ours feature incomes from multiple subchapter-S corps as well as some LLPs), self-prepared return that is for a person over the age of fifty.

I will eat my keyboard if it turns out that someone who wasn't a CPA (including me) was capable of self-preparing a return of any that complexity long-term without making a mistake that resulted in at least a $1k under- or over-payment. What you're likely running into there is the fact that the IRS cannot afford the staff to follow up on a lot of things they deem unlikely to be collected, and they've got plenty of people out there who they can prove owe tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars who are a higher collection priority. For someone who is 90+, well, the funding problem isn't clearing up anytime soon. For someone in their 70s who might live to be 90+, what you're doing with this is gambling with their assets. It might turn out okay, but it's a risk. (Although the advantage of going to a CPA is that the IRS only catches errors in their favor, usually, not yours.)

For perspective, I know one person who owed over $10k in payroll tax liabilities and non-deposit penalties--WAY higher enforcement priority than income tax--and were over twelve months in arrears on that and they were only just getting around to strongly-worded letters. And there was zero question that they owed that money, accurate quarterly reports had been filed but no payments had been made. Still not a big deal. On the other hand, someone who fell behind on an installment agreement on a ~$50k bill, that got to strongly-worded letters within three months. The IRS right now is scrambling to keep the doors open. They can't even answer the phones for CPAs anymore. The flip side of this is that the notion that they'd actually call taxpayers about a sub-$10k bill is ridiculous. But don't assume every notice you get in the mail is fake, either.
posted by Sequence at 6:43 PM on November 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


I got one of these calls awhile back. The dead giveaway that it was a scam was how angry the person sounded. Comforting or not, no bureaucrat is going to have an emotional stake in you having made a mistake on your taxes. You are one of hundreds of thousands of people they are going through. And playing phone tag is a gigantic waste of everyone's time. If you get anything from the IRS, it'll be a letter.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 6:43 PM on November 25, 2015 [31 favorites]


In our forty years of marriage, the IRS has adjusted our (my husband's and my) taxes both up and down after the fact, always accurately, and when we couldn't pay one year we arranged a payment plan with a minor penalty, basically by sending in a token payment with a correctly filled-in return. They're surprisingly easy to deal with.

I haven't been taken by a phone call since I advertised for a roommate 40 years ago and one caller sounded very pleasant until somehow the conversation turned into a discussion of what underwear I was wearing. But then, I don't answer the phone any more.
posted by Peach at 6:45 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've dealt with IRS, and as many others also say, found them utterly competent, professional, and - nice.

That's why the susceptibility to scamming is so odd in this situation: if the IRS did in reality behave like the mob, the scam would work better. But they don't, and I don't think they have any kind of reputation for mean intimidating coercive behavior, at all.

I get that people imagine that the IRS is awful and respond accordingly, but there is no precedent that the scam is matching.
posted by Dashy at 6:55 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


I got one of those IRS scam calls a few weeks ago. It's actually quite official sounding, save for the slight ESL-ish accent.

I had read about them and was actually a bit excited to actually get one. I've become bored with the calls from "card member services" or "Kevin from Windows."
posted by Thorzdad at 7:06 PM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


> The "multiple Ivy League degrees" detail triggers my "look at me" spidey-sense.

The people who believe they're the smartest ones in the room make the easiest marks.
posted by ardgedee at 7:11 PM on November 25, 2015 [16 favorites]


When I sold my little condo the title company made a mistake on the form they sent to the IRS and accidentally added a zero. Eventually, a year or two later, I got a notice from the IRS saying that I owed them... $1 million. Literally! It was a bit frightening, and I gave them a call. They were very reasonable and told me that I had a few months to clear up the mistake, but after that they would come after me for it. So, even for a million dollars, they gave me quite a bit of time to resolve the issue.

I've also received one of these scam calls. It didn't sound right from the start, so I googled and found out what was going on immediately.
posted by jjwiseman at 7:14 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


That's why the susceptibility to scamming is so odd in this situation: if the IRS did in reality behave like the mob, the scam would work better. But they don't, and I don't think they have any kind of reputation for mean intimidating coercive behavior, at all.

That's kind of the irony of this scam, though, in that the people who fall for it are the people who have never messed up with the IRS -- and therefore remain scared shitless of messing up with the IRS.

I failed to pay taxes after a year of self-employment (because I was woefully uninformed about how to deal with paying taxes when you're self-employed). I had to deal with the IRS a couple years later to avoid having my wages garnished. So, I personally wouldn't have fallen for this scam because I've had to deal with them regarding back taxes, and every single person I talked to was absolutely pleasant and unintimidating about it. But, I can totally see how someone who has not had that experience with them could easily be cowed by an intimidating phone call, even one with details as spurious as the one the writer relates.
posted by mudpuppie at 7:16 PM on November 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


Every IRS employee I've dealt with has been competent and professional. Basically you are dealing with helpful, educated, well-trained people in an organization that is very understaffed due to budget cuts.

The one time I actually had to call myself and deal with a thing, the guy who answered the phone sounded like he was maybe 16 and I really, really thought I had the wrong number but I managed to suppress my initial shitty urge to ask to speak with an adult, as I myself have a hilariously squeaky preteen phone voice, and I asked him my question and got back a super clear yet super detailed answer and it was the best fucking thing ever and also I didn't owe any more money so yay
posted by poffin boffin at 7:20 PM on November 25, 2015 [20 favorites]


Someone filed taxes under one of our ss#s, to get a refund, and we didn't know about it until it was time to file, and our return was rejected. Called the IRS and followed protocol for stolen identity, and our return was held up for a few months, but was resolved. While working on resolution, I got one of these calls, and even though I knew it was a scam from the get-go, because of the vitriol and because of the accent, my lizard brain still went into fight or flight mode. Just hearing IRS makes an american heart palpitate, and I see how people could be terrified into reacting.

I knew it was a scam because the IRS said that they don't do out calls, everything is handled by us post. That said, I've started answering the phone in Spanish or Arabic or Dutch, and I've discovered that spammers, scammers and salespeople will just hang up.

That said, there is no hell hot enough for these assholes.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:35 PM on November 25, 2015 [10 favorites]


Wow. I read this the other day and found it hard to believe that an intelligent, informed person could fall for a scam like this, but OTOH, I've faced my share of (mostly self-inflicted) stress when dealing with personal and business taxes with the CRA in Canada. (The CRA is also full of lovely, patient informed people. I've never dealt with anyone who gave me a hard time.) So with the right combination of stressors, especially if you have had no direct experience with the IRS/CRA before this point, I can see this story playing out exactly as written for any number of people you wouldn't expect to be scammed.

I had the opposite problem last week. I got an automated call allegedly from [Canadian bank] about my credit card. The call display showed TOLL FREE CALLER but no number. The recorded voice addressed me by name, promised that it wasn't a marketing call but didn't say anything at all about why they wanted to reach me, and told me that I could communicate with them at [some P.O. Box address in Montreal] or by calling [some 1-866 number]. Alternatively, I could press 1 on my phone and talk to somebody immediately.

My immediate response was "This has to be a scam." I pressed 1 out of curiosity, but the line disconnected. I then called my bank immediately to confirm my assumption that it was a scam. The agent I talked to asked if I could remember what the phone number and post office box were, but I couldn't. (I don't typically answer the phone with pen and paper at hand, ready to make detailed notes immediately.) But based on my description, the agent agreed that it was a scam. I mentioned that I had just realized that I had totally missed a previous payment date when I made my current payment the day before, and we discussed how I could deal with that in the future. Nice conversation, and I hung up feeling that I'd done a favour for the bank by alerting them to a scam.

Two hours later: TOLL FREE CALLER rang up again. This time I had a pen and recorded all the info, then I called my bank again to let them know what false info these scammers were giving out. The new agent I talked to said, "Oh, that's one of our 1-866 numbers, used by our Security department."

I asked to be transferred to Security. They were trying to reach me through their automated call tree because of that one missed payment (I had made a payment covering the full balance accrued a couple of days before, but the payment hadn't yet reached them.) So I wasn't in any danger of going to collections because I had found my error and corrected it, but the method this bank chose to notify me that I was late was AWFUL.

1) They didn't display the real phone number on my phone so I could have checked that immediately after I hung up.
2) The automated message didn't sound legit. Yes, it used my full name, but that's not impossible to find. (I can see why they wouldn't want to just say "YOUR PAYMENT IS OVERDUE!" on a call anyone could pick up, but the technical failure of the system the first time and the masked number both times did not inspire confidence at all.)
3) The first agent I talked to didn't recognize what the call was supposed to be, and agreed with me that it was probably a scam.
4) If I had chosen not to pick up the second call that day -- because scam -- and if I hadn't already covered for my late payment, things could have escalated unpleasantly.

So I spent a few minutes telling the second agent all this, but I don't know if [Canadian bank] will pay much attention to my feedback.
posted by maudlin at 7:39 PM on November 25, 2015 [10 favorites]


Weird. Every time I've had even the slightest tax anomaly, I called them and got it straightened out immediately. Well, once they sent me a questionaire to fill out. It all comes by mail, except maybe through your employer. A huge wave of fake-o IRS email spaminess came through about 3-4 years ago, which sent one of my buddies into a tizzy (ridiculous, since he's homeless), but it's been quiet since then at my end.
posted by telstar at 7:41 PM on November 25, 2015


I work in legal, and there is one convincing mailer that I got twice that I sent to the state Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division, Fraud Unit. I knew it was false, but it was that convincing for the easily-swayed or inattentive. Glad people are raising awareness. My mom, now retired, has physics as her first undergrad degree. She opened the second mailer (my test) and thought Terrible Things were happening. I must have missed a bill or something. After I walked her through the analysis, she's a tougher sell.
posted by childofTethys at 7:42 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


I got two of these calls. One was a straight-up robocaller, and the other was a live person (badly recorded here). Both of them sounded like ESL-speakers.
posted by RakDaddy at 7:49 PM on November 25, 2015


Just then, my cell phone rang. The caller ID read 911.

This is where I facepalmed.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:49 PM on November 25, 2015 [9 favorites]


It's actually quite official sounding, save for the slight ESL-ish accent.
...
Both of them sounded like ESL-speakers.


1 in 5 people in the US speak a language other than English at home. It's not unreasonable to think that some of them might work for the IRS.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:00 PM on November 25, 2015 [13 favorites]


Every IRS employee I've dealt with has been competent and professional.

I was at an IRS office in Springfield, MA, several weeks ago and overheard an agent openly quoting scripture to a taxpayer. The woman who helped me, however (apparently there are two IRS employees for the entire western half of Massachusetts), was quite competent and helpful, and never mentioned the bible.
posted by Camofrog at 8:06 PM on November 25, 2015


Every interaction I've had with the IRS was accompanied by copious amounts of correspondence on their part, up to and including multiple pieces of certified mail. NEVER once did they call me.

I've always had to call them myself, and as mentioned above, they were always extremely helpful and professional. I'd like to think that if I ever got contacted by these scammers, I'd be sharp enough to just hang up and file a report.
posted by monospace at 8:16 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


No need to be smug even you've read 'The Art of Deception' and know all about phishing, it's still easy to be distracted for a moment by a quick security email from a perfect counterfeit of your local bank's website. [Or, as maudlin mentioned above, a real call from your actual real [Canadian Bank] can also seem unbelievably amateurish and fake-sounding.]
posted by ovvl at 8:18 PM on November 25, 2015 [6 favorites]


I miss the days when scammers just tried to sell you a warranty extension on your 20 year old Honda Civic.
posted by pwnguin at 8:39 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


I miss the days when scammers just tried to sell you a warranty extension on your 20 year old Honda Civic.

Oh, I still get those. Constantly. Packaged like a paystub or DMV form. If you want, I can send them your way.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:03 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


How is it that we are incapable of prosecuting or even attempting to educate against shit like this?

I know the ftc cracks down every now and then on random robocall stuff, but its few and far between.
posted by Lord_Pall at 9:15 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


> The IRS doesn't have the manpower to answer their phones, much less send actual humans after you for $5k.

Astonishingly enough, the IRS did show up at my door some years ago - though the sum of money in question was a lot more than $5K (mostly a reporting mixup).

They were surprisingly civilized though...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:20 PM on November 25, 2015


My mail was stolen and the thieves used the accounts to pay their bills, like with names and stuff. I didn't lose anything, but the banks made it clear they weren't interested at all in the case.
posted by telstar at 9:21 PM on November 25, 2015


...degree from an Ivy League university...
...my career as a journalist...


enough said.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 9:38 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


There's certainly scams I could fall prey to, but I am still boggled that someone who wasn't working under a serious handicap such as being foreign-born and inexperienced with the IRS could possible fall for this one. "Don't leave the city?" Yeah right. a
posted by tavella at 10:17 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah right. a

OMG, they got tavella!
posted by Wolof at 10:41 PM on November 25, 2015 [26 favorites]


Yeah, this is a real thing- my mom (who is a smart rational lady) fell for one last year- lost like $8000. My departed dad always did our taxes, and after he had a stroke she always worried he might've not been filing correctly. When they called and threatened arrest so angrily it blindsided her. She's still ashamed she fell for it... The scammers prey on people's fears and are very fast about it- so those who do get hooked don't have time to realize the holes in their scam.
posted by actionpact at 11:14 PM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


When I registered for a land line I gave it under a false name of "Kilgore Trout", and then authorized my real identity as primary payor and decider on the account*. It was super handy because I always knew that any mail or phone calls addressed to "Mr Trout" were invariably spams or scams. The one exception, of course, was that all correspondence from my phone company was also addressed to Mr. Trout, so I had taken early precautions to go paperless wherever possible.

This ruse was SO good that I became overconfident, and it almost got me. One time I got a call and the way the guy worded his opener I thought he was calling from my phone company. It was also early morning on a Saturday and I was a little groggy. He said he was just changing my phone plan to a cheaper long distance option and all this stuff and I thought it sounded pretty good and then he was all "ok now I just need you to talk to this 3rd party to confirm the change" and he was coaching me precisely on everything I needed to say and THEN my BS meter tripped.

Wait, I thought. This is a slamming thing, isn't it. So I questioned the guy. I said, why do you need to verify my decision with a 3rd party? I thought you said it was already done and you were just informing me of the change...

At this point he started to get belligerent. He told me to "stop asking stupid questions" and "stop being difficult". He raised his voice, tried to rile me up (it was working but I kept my cool). I just repeated the question, calmly asking him to give me a straight answer. He never did, and eventually ended the call after calling me a smartass motherfucker or some such. It was still pretty rattling, even though I knew what was happening.

*Pretty sure you're not supposed to give fake information when signing up for a landline...so don't try this at home kids
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:28 PM on November 25, 2015 [8 favorites]


Yeah I got taken in by a medical billing scam, got a bill of what turned out to be an identical amount to the hospital bill from a PO Box in Nevada before the local hospital's bill got to me in the mail. Once they knew they had a sucker they escalated and sent a more threatening message with a higher charge and called me on the phone for collections.

Of course the legit bill was $1000 for three bags of saline, due to me not paying into any of the federally supported medical billing scams...
posted by 3urypteris at 11:28 PM on November 25, 2015


Yeah, earlier this year my parents got a tax shakedown call meant for me. My dad picked up, and they told him there was someone on their way to my office to arrest me. He said it seemed suspicious, but you just never know, so he started mentally trying to figure out if he could front me the money. Fortunately, my mom came home on her lunch break, and when she overheard the phone conversation she said "IT'S A SCAM! I heard about it on talk radio!"

They called the police to double-check, and I think they made a report to the IRS, and then my dad sent me a confusing summation of the entire situation via text message. And even though I knew it was a scam, and it had been resolved before I even heard about it, I still felt compelled to dig up my last tax return and fret over it for a little while.
posted by brookedel at 11:51 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


There was an Australian version of this scam.
It evolved.
The first was a guy with an Indian accent, who didn't wait for the machine to pick up and said he was calling from the Australian Taxations Office.

The second was much better.
posted by Mezentian at 3:24 AM on November 26, 2015


How is it that we are incapable of prosecuting or even attempting to educate against shit like this?

WRT prosecution, the perps are usually calling from outside the country. Prosecution would require huge amounts of investigatory manpower and international judicial hoohaw. If it isn't Madoff levels of money, nobody will bother.

The IRS has, in fact made efforts to educate people that they will not ever initiate phone calls.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:10 AM on November 26, 2015


As I just wrote to the people I sent the link to:

Anyone who's never been scammed will probably think "This could never happen to me." Those of us who have know it can happen to anyone.
posted by languagehat at 6:11 AM on November 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


How do the scammers get the relevant info? Some of it's readily available with an Internet search, but ppl who file for an IRS refund using another person's social security number?

Are scammers like these part of the market for data stolen in "data breaches"?
posted by Jesse the K at 6:25 AM on November 26, 2015


Anyone who's never been scammed will probably think "This could never happen to me." Those of us who have know it can happen to anyone.

To that, I would just add, from page 22 of this here report linked in the FPP:
The stereotype of fraud victims as older, less educated adults is entrenched. There is a common perception, especially in the media, that older, uneducated people are more likely to be victims of fraud. Indeed, the profiles of some victims, such as lottery fraud victims, do show higher proportions of victims coming from older age groups. However, the profile of the typical investment fraud victim is vastly different from the popular notion of fraud victims as lonely, old, and uneducated. Moreover, as mentioned above, several national studies indicate that younger consumers are more likely to be victimized than older consumers. Even in the face of this countervailing research, the perception that all fraud victims are old and uneducated remains common. For example, the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) conducted a survey in 1999 to examine the public’s perceptions of, and experiences with, white collar crime. As you can see below, 49% of the respondents believed those with less than a college education are more likely to be the victims of fraud, and 60% of respondents believed those over 60 years old are more likely to be victims of fraud (NW3C, 2001).
(emphasis mine)
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:14 AM on November 26, 2015 [6 favorites]


Also, if you look at the list of Bernie Madoff's victims, to pluck a high-profile example out of the air, what you have is a list of people and entire institutions with the resources and knowledge to scrutinize any investment to death, and they still got taken in large numbers - economists, financiers, presumably sophisticated business people, you name it.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:24 AM on November 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


I got these calls for a few months, but I never answer my home phone, so it was just a series of fairly official-sounding messages, which I declined to return.
posted by gingerbeer at 8:37 AM on November 26, 2015


maudlin: the method this bank chose to notify me that I was late was AWFUL.

CIBC, I presume? They're the ones I had the same go-round with. Somebody called and said "We're checking about unusual/unauthorized account activity, please call back." This is important, right? I've already had my bank card cloned and dealt with by a different bank. After 60+ minutes on hold, no - they just want to know why my payment is late (and all that for like, $65). This is social engineering amateur hour, it's immensely counterproductive, and it's eroding the trust people have in banks. Which makes all of us more easily scammed by the next shouty guy on the phone.
posted by sneebler at 8:37 AM on November 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


I got audited once, just because my employer kept screwing up my W-2 and filed four corrections all for the same year. At first I was like, seriously? You're going after a lower-middle-class guy who just takes the standard deduction? You don't have bigger fish to fry? The agent was polite and informative, and it took less than a day. He concluded that nothing was amiss and gave me a letter declaring that. But it still shook me up enough (because OMG IRS) that ever since then, I still pay a pro to do my taxes every year. If I got one of these calls, even though part of my brain would know it's a scam, it'd still get me in a panic.
posted by xedrik at 9:18 AM on November 26, 2015


How is it that we are incapable of prosecuting or even attempting to educate against shit like this?

Well, in terms of educating, the first four results I get from Googling "IRS scam calls" are from the IRS' own site, but this whole scam depends on people being terrified of the IRS in the first place, so good luck with that. As far as how they're getting away with it, it's a combination of things: the aforementioned demonization of the IRS (which is a perennial hit, and especially popular now with the Tea Partiers), general fear of getting in worse trouble with authorities if you don't submit without protest, and the ability to make anonymous phone calls and money transfers.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:44 AM on November 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


A dear friend shamefacedly told me about getting one of these calls and totally falling for it. She didn't have immediate access to the amount they were demanding, thank gog, because that meant she had to call a friend to ask for a loan. That friend realized what was going on and was able to reassure her so that she neither paid the demand nor continued to worry about it. What I saw in her story was both fear of the IRS and deep shame over the thought that she was in such financial trouble, so she would have done anything to make it go away. I'm so thankful that she didn't have the money to pay it, although in a catch-22 if her finances were more stable she might not have been so quick to believe she had fucked up.
posted by janey47 at 10:32 AM on November 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


I got audited once and owed taxes because my graduate stipend wasn't recorded correctly. Let me join the chorus of people saying that the IRS people are super nice and helpful and their payment terms are reasonable. If you have to talk to them, don't be scared.
posted by winna at 11:08 AM on November 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


How could the guy in the OP be this gullible? Seriously, you think swat teams are bearing down on you for a civil matter? I guess this really is Police State USA.
posted by telstar at 5:36 PM on November 26, 2015


How could the guy in the OP be this gullible?

Not a dude.

What I saw in her story was both fear of the IRS and deep shame over the thought that she was in such financial trouble, so she would have done anything to make it go away

Yes.

And this is different from a scam that relies on greed (pace Madoff or any number of lower-level Ponzi or pyramid schemes, or even the "419" Nigerian Prince scams).

The people running these tax authority scams rely on this sense fear and shame - they only need a few payoffs out of thousands of contacts to make it worthwhile. They're not doing something as (relatively) capital intensive as manufacturing a bogus physical product and selling it. They're just saying: "Give us money." What if they get someone on the horn who IS having a tax issue and not sure what to do about it?

As a lot of the research shows, that shame keeps people they've scammed from reporting it, too, so that's an impediment to chasing down the scammers.

And because it's not a street robbery where your wallet is grabbed, or a break-in, where physical force was applied to take your stuff, but rather a transaction you consented to...it's pretty awkward to report. Because you're worried that people will think you're stupid. But you're not, right? Somebody pushed a bunch of emotional buttons (you realize now) and clean took your money.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:41 PM on November 26, 2015 [6 favorites]


My wife (also an immigrant) got a series of these calls until she yelled at them and told them to fuck off. She was unsure about it at first, but after some googling it was quite clear that it was a scam.
posted by Earl the Polliwog at 8:13 PM on November 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm a cynical man, and I snopes and google almost any claim anyone makes anywhere. I am the annoying guy on facebook that corrects everybody when they post photoshopped pictures of the supposed smallest cat in the world.

And at least once a month an article will catch me at just the right time, about a subject that interests me just so... and i'll mutter obscenities to myself for wasting two minutes of my time on nonsense. It's not too different. The element of surprise is a big boon to them, and scammers don't need every person they phone to pay out.
posted by trif at 3:50 AM on November 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


I once had a Fraternal Order of Police fundraiser hang up on me when I calmly asked him to switch to a more conversational tone. It was weird hearing a "pull over" or "drill sergeant" tactic while standing in my kitchen, so I called it out.
posted by childofTethys at 6:51 AM on November 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Which makes all of us more easily scammed by the next shouty guy on the phone.

Ugh, yeah. I have one of those horrible "credit-building" cards (that has like 38% APR and a limit of $200 and an annual fee that they make you pay on a monthly basis) which I got when I moved back to the US with ~10 years of no credit history. And it's a terrible card and I've never used it for anything more than a $2 soda from a machine. And you can't set it to autopay, and their own reminder system only reminds you to pay it when it's too late to pay without a fine.

And then one single fucking month I forgot to pay the $9 and they started calling my work phone and my cell phone every hour on the hour, furiously demanding their $9, insisting that if I didn't give them - these angry strangers who did not identify themselves as being from the shitty card company - my bank info and ssn and another visa number IMMEDIATELY that I would be sent to collections and face huge fines and immediate ruination of my carefully rebuilt credit. This was their standard procedure for overdue bills, none of which could ever be over $200 due to the nature of the card.

Since I had already had the terrible card for 3-4 years I had built my credit up to the mid 800s and didn't care about their stupid threats, and I told them to fuck off and die in a fire, and that I'd pay online when I got home from work. So they started calling the general number of my office and telling whichever coworker who answered that I was a financial delinquent. Again, this was all done by legitimate members of their "customer service" department.

This is a card targeted towards people who have terrible or nonexistent credit, aka some of the most financially vulnerable people in the US. These practices are specifically developed to terrify people who don't a lot of resources, and honestly it would not surprise me to learn that the scammers were once employees of card companies.
posted by poffin boffin at 8:08 AM on November 27, 2015 [7 favorites]


PareidoliaticBoy: "Good grief.

“We’re only calling you as a courtesy to inform you that you will be arrested and charged with failure to meet federal taxation requirements, malicious conduct, and theft by deception. You will be arrested within the next two hours and held in custody for six months pending an investigation.”

She believed this utter nonsense? Face palm. I like the malicious conduct charge wedged in there. They might as well have said "being a big meany".
"

Well, after the Mega Doodyhead Act of 1991, you had to start being more careful.
posted by Samizdata at 10:59 AM on November 27, 2015


Peach: "In our forty years of marriage, the IRS has adjusted our (my husband's and my) taxes both up and down after the fact, always accurately, and when we couldn't pay one year we arranged a payment plan with a minor penalty, basically by sending in a token payment with a correctly filled-in return. They're surprisingly easy to deal with.

I haven't been taken by a phone call since I advertised for a roommate 40 years ago and one caller sounded very pleasant until somehow the conversation turned into a discussion of what underwear I was wearing. But then, I don't answer the phone any more.
"

Or wear underwear, amirite?
posted by Samizdata at 11:02 AM on November 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Every IRS employee I've dealt with has been competent and professional. Basically you are dealing with helpful, educated, well-trained people in an organization that is very understaffed due to budget cuts. So it's this interesting mix of great and terrible. Plus you probably only deal with them in unfortunate circumstances, so that colors things a bit, too.
posted by ryanrs at 9:29 PM on November 25


After my mother died, I had the difficult task of sorting through all of the papers that she had in her house. My mother had hoarding tendencies, and like many hoarders she tended to have problems assigning the correct value to things, especially documents. As a result, important papers were in piles with decidedly non-important ones, so there was no way to just pick up a pile and throw it out--you might accidentally through out something like the deed to the house. It took me around two years of driving home every weekend to sort through it all.

Anyway, in the course of sorting, I found a letter from my older brother's work place. My older brother was part of a hire-the-handicapped program at a local Army facility. The letter stated that, due to a physical defect in the tapes that they used submit salary and other information to the IRS that year (yes, they still use tapes), several employees at the facility were receiving automatically-generated letters from the IRS informing them that they owed ridiculous amounts of back taxes--as in, hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in back taxes!

The letter went on to say that the work place contact the IRS immediately when they found out what was happening. The errors were found and a solution put in place. The letter contained instructions on what to do to get the erroneous back taxes off one's record.

Since I'm legal guardian for my brother, I checked his credit report. It was blank, except for an IRS claim of back taxes of over $330,000!

I followed the instructions on the letter. I called the regional IRS office and spoke to a very professional, knowledgeable lady who had me submit my brother's info and my proof of guardianship via fax to her office. In less than two weeks, it was all fixed.

After Ma's death, I went into a depressive spiral as I tried to take care of my disabled brothers, my father (who started to show signs of dementia shortly after Ma died), and handle the medical debts leftover from her illness. Dealing with money became an extremely painful thing for me to do, and I didn't always handle it well. I went four years without filing state and federal taxes.

This year, I girded my loins, contacted a CPA, told her what happened, and prepared myself for the worst. Instead, it turned out I was owed money. She filed all of my back taxes this year, and everything was resolved with no significant penalty to me by July.

In all of my interactions with the IRS, I have never had a single problem. And I tell people: if you're having problems, go to them first. They WILL work with you, and unless you've done something massively criminal (like, Bernie Madoff-level criminal), you will be surprised how helpful and patient they are.
posted by magstheaxe at 6:21 AM on November 28, 2015 [9 favorites]


Seriously, you think swat teams are bearing down on you for a civil matter? I guess this really is Police State USA.

Your guess is correct.
SWAT Team Raids House at 6 AM and Handcuffs Father of Three Young Kids to Execute a Dept. of Education Search Warrant for Estranged Wife's Defaulted Student Loans
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:22 AM on November 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


magstheaxe: Congratulations! What a difficult thing to go through. I am glad you are doing better now.
posted by SLC Mom at 9:45 AM on November 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


The whole US tax system seems insane to me. In Australia you verify your identity online and check one or two boxes and hit "submit" and it's done. The government already has all the information, so you just give it the nod. I haven't filled in a form for like 10 years and the last couple of years I've barely done anything at all.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:58 PM on November 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


Where's the fun in that?

Honestly, think about how much sweat and stress and tears we could save up to be used on the next shooting outrage.
posted by sneebler at 7:18 PM on November 29, 2015


I haven't filled in a form for like 10 years and the last couple of years I've barely done anything at all.

Yes, but the terrible price you pay for this convenience is beetroot on your hamburgers.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:42 PM on November 29, 2015 [2 favorites]


The whole US tax system seems insane to me.

It's been suggested that the US adopt a similar system, but the unfortunate truth is that tax prep companies have a lobby, and nearly every tax form / clause has a constituency that would be harmed by simplifying their tax break out.
posted by pwnguin at 11:29 PM on November 29, 2015


I would venture to guess, with no supporting evidence at all, that Australia lacks the universe of tax breaks for rich people with which the US system is replete. Since rich people control lawmaking in the US, the Australian system will never be implemented here.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:17 AM on November 30, 2015


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