DENVER – U.S. Attorney John Walsh, with IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS CI) Special Agent in Charge Stephen Boyd and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) Preston “Cordale” Lamb, discussed IRS fraud scams, focusing on the fraudulent calls threatening arrest if the call recipient fails to pay.
According to TIGTA, which started tracking the threatening phone scam, or variations of it, in October of 2013, they have nationwide received 1,029,601 calls from people reporting receiving the scam phone call. Of that number, 5,508 were victims, who lost a total of $29,100,604.00
In Colorado, according to TIGTA, the state is ranked 13th in the number of victims. There have been 111 victims who have lost $632,000.00.
There was one example of a fraudulent call, and two TIGTA public service announcements (one in English and one in Spanish) that were mentioned during the event. The links to those examples are below:
Sample call (open source): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjQ7K3FwL44
TIGTA PSA (government source): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4dSU0BElmzA_o7atb929AA
If an individual receives a call they believe to be suspicious, the best thing to do is hang up. The individual can also call 1-800-829-1040 to see if the IRS is actually attempting to get in contact with them. If they are fairly certain the call is fake, and they have detailed information about the call, or believe they have been victimized by the scam, they can report the call by either calling TIGTA at 1-800-366-4484 or sending an email to complaints@tigta.treas.gov