We reported last week on an IRS scam that continues to take money from innocent taxpayers. Because of the nature of our business, many individuals call us to verify their “tax refund” that is owed to them or verify the so called “tax debt” they have with the IRS. We always tell people that the IRS generally doesn’t call, they send letters, and most likely what they experienced is a scam.
Here is the voicemail one of the owners of our firm recently received.
In an effort to find out more about the situation, one caller provided the phone number that called him, the number they were instructed to call to receive their “hardship refund” with the confirmation code that was provided to them from the initial caller. The confirmation code is required it seems by the 2nd phone number they require you to call.
Instead of being a “tax hardship refund,” the person on the end of the call stated that it was a grant or stimulus plan payment. They told us that it was a payment or grant from the the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Then they instructed us to go to grant.gov in order to register but didn’t provide any guidance from there. They said there is a “fee” for receiving the payment of $250 dollars. Once we told him the fee was acceptable, they asked us for our bank information. Well we had fun, and told him the name of our bank was “scam bank.” Since they called someone from Texas, we had to do our fake impression of a southern accent.
You can listen to call below. We had to cut out the name of the person for privacy reasons. These scams are real and these people do not care about taking money from innocent Americans. Don’t fall prey to any of these scams.
