For the last several weeks I have been getting persistent phone calls from people claiming to be IRS agents who leave messages about decisions the IRS has made to sue me. I had been deleting the messages and forgetting about the calls–until the next one, and the next…
Last week I was finally irritated enough to call back the number left by VM and start being the annoying Pat Rainey that everyone loves.
“This is IRS Agent Rick Houser”, answered a male voice in a very thick Indian accent. So began a cat and mouse game of Rick extracting information from me about who I was after he explained my daunting legal issues with the IRS. I made everything up along the way including my social security number. Then he tripped me up when he asked me to repeat my SSN. Dang–should have thought that through given my inability to recall a sequence of numbers past 3 digits.
“Are you playing with the IRS?”, Rick asked. “Do you really think that I think you are the IRS?”, I responded. “You’re just a low-life scammer trying to steal from the unsuspecting and uniformed–how can you live with yourself?”
“Who the (nasty expletive) are you?”, interrupted a 3rd voice–plainly a native english speaking american and quite comforting to know that a fellow citizen was eavesdropping and involved in this thievery.
I won’t share the rest of the conversation but I was such a jerk that the IRS impersonators actually hung up on me! What a proud moment for the Rainey clan this was!
All this to say that the IRS will never (as taken from IRS.gov):
- Call to demand immediate payment, nor will the agency call about taxes owed without first having mailed you a bill.
- Demand that you pay taxes without giving you the opportunity to question or appeal the amount they say you owe.
- Require you to use a specific payment method for your taxes, such as a prepaid debit card.
- Ask for credit or debit card numbers over the phone.
- Threaten to bring in local police or other law-enforcement groups to have you arrested for not paying.
Apparently, American tax payers have sent scammers around $14,000,000 in this latest scam that has been going on for about 3 years!