…is what my accountant told me in October after I received a voice mail telling me the IRS was suing me.
Upon discovering there had been a rash of such calls in our neighborhood, WestView News ran a piece in November alerting readers.
However, I guess the scammers didn’t read my piece, since I had two more messages late in January, and one friend got three in one afternoon.
When Arthur Schwartz heard about my experience, he wrote me warning of an even scarier scam: “There is another bad one going around. They say they are from Microsoft or Google, and that they have detected something wrong with your computer. They have you go on a web site and then hit some buttons, and Voila, they are looking at your entire hard drive, which they load up with malware which allows them access remotely.”
When WVN asked Schwartz what the FCC was doing about the rash of calls from ‘energy consolidators’—companies that buy power from Con Ed at a discount and re-sell it to unsuspecting Con Ed customers, he replied, “The resellers aren’t scammers in the same sense. They entice people with low rates for an intro period and then double or triple what Con Ed charges. They actually can take over as your provider and bill you through Con Ed. That is worth a separate story.”
The real snag, of course, is that the IRS and FCC seem powerless to stop these epidemics.
— Maggie Berkvist
What to do if you are a victim of:
An IRS Scam
https://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/Scam-Phone-Calls-Continue-IRS-Unveils-New-Video-to-Warn-Taxpayers gives information about how to recognize a scam, and what measures to take if you’ve been on the receiving end. You can also report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) at 1.800.366.4484 or at www.tigta.gov.
An Internet Scam
• Contact your phone company
• File a police report (required by some carriers)
• Contact your bank and other financial institutions
• Place a fraud alert on your credit reports, and get copies.
• File a complaint at FCC.gov/complaints or 1-888-CALL-FCC
Additional Resources
• The Consumer Guide to Spoofing on https://www.fcc.gov/spoofing.
• Robocalling & Spoofing Workshop at https://www.fcc.gov/events/workshop-focus-robocall-blocking-and-caller-id-spoofing. (very long, over four hours
