Fake IRS agents scare many consumers into paying up

Detroit Free Press – by Susan Tompor

Jennifer Blanzy, 53, returned home from exercising one Saturday morning in September only to find out that someone was threatening to put her in jail because she wasn’t responding to letters from the IRS.

The message left on the answering machine at her Grosse Pointe Park home said: “Do not ignore this phone call.”

“So I called right away,” Blanzy said.  

After all, Blanzy’s husband was wondering what was going on; her young daughter was frightened that something bad was going to happen to her mother. But quickly calling the number only stirred up frustration and out-right bullying from someone claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service.

By now, one would think that most people have heard the warnings about the scam artists who are claiming to be from the IRS. The con artists yell and shout and threaten that people will go to jail or lose their drivers’ licenses if they don’t hand over money quickly.

But Blanzy never heard those warnings — otherwise she wouldn’t have called her mother and asked for help finding an attorney quickly.

The threats of jail can be so intimidating that others targeted by the same scam rush to drugstores or supermarkets to load up thousands of dollars on prepaid GreenDot cards or other prepaid cards.

Since October 2013, the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has received more than 130,000 complaints relating to the scam and has had reports of more than $8 million in losses nationwide.

In Michigan, consumers lost about $119,000 on the impersonation scam, according to the agency within the Treasury Department that provides independent oversight of the IRS.

Michigan is about in 14th place for the highest losses, according to TIGTA. The top five states with the most complaints are: California, New York, Florida, Virginia and Texas.

One Michigan senior lost $1,000 or more to this scam about a month ago after receiving a call from a man impersonating an IRS debt collector based in the state of Washington.

The man was told his tax returns for 2007 through 2012 were incorrect and he owed the IRS $2,500. The caller threatened jail time if money wasn’t sent.

“He instructed my client to mail the payment immediately or an IRS agent would be at his front door at 11:30 a.m. the next day to put my client in jail,” said George W. Smith IV, a certified public accountant and partner at George W. Smith in Southfield.

The man was ordered to put $500 on five MoneyGram prepaid cards and told not to contact his attorney or CPA. He contacted the CPA, who could not convince him it was a scam because the man was so terrified of being sent to jail.

After the client mailed in at least $1,000, he received more calls. Now, he owed money to the State of Michigan and the IRS was authorized to collect it. The new total was around $5,500. And there were more jail threats.

“I told my client that this scam would continue perpetually until he was broke,” Smith said.

Blanzy was lucky in a way; she did not pay the nearly $6,900 that the man eventually said she owed. He didn’t even tell her at first what she owed. After several minutes, she had to ask: “How much do I owe?”

But even if she did not get tricked into paying, thanks to some advice from a friend, she did endure a frightening round of calls.

“He made it sound like I was definitely going to be arrested,” she said. “It was really, really scary.”

The IRS scam remains one of the hottest nuisances. The con artists keep going at it, no doubt, because they know they can play up everyone’s fear of being called by the IRS.

Even consumers who know it’s a scam are in an uproar, too.

Michigan residents have filed dozens of complaints with the state Attorney General’s Office because of abusive language, threats and aggressive tactics. Some consumers mention callers with heavy accents, sometimes Asian accents and often garbled diction.

Con artists claimed that the homeowner was under investigation; some threatened a grand jury indictment for a federal criminal offense relating to the U.S. Treasury Department, according to reports obtained from the Michigan Attorney General’s office under the Freedom of Information Act.

Some threats included claims that the consumer’s bank accounts could be frozen if they did not pay up.

One Michigan resident said he received a phone message claiming to be from the IRS and he said the caller told him that he needed to “lawyer up.”

“I do not believe the IRS would leave a computerized voice message that I need to lawyer up,” the resident wrote the state Attorney General’s Office.

Richard Hall, 50, of Chesterfield Township said a man who called himself “IRS agent McCoy” called him in August and demanded $9,000 from him. He asked Hall to give him his debit card number on the phone.

“I was born a long time ago, not yesterday,” Hall said in an interview.

A Warren consumer claimed that the caller demanded $3,489. The con artist told her not to discuss this with anyone because he would lose his job.

Another Michigan resident claims the caller said if you can’t pay the full $3,000 owed, could you give some “good faith” money on the spot?

One reported that someone claimed the IRS had done an audit and they owed $3,600 within the next 45 minutes.

Michigan consumers said callers used names such as Jason Scott, John Smith, Danielle Larson, Steve Wilson, Derrick Phillips and William Turner.

Calls turned vulgar at times, too.

Often, consumers reported that callers would make repeated phone calls, such as three calls in two days or sometimes five calls in one day.

Some experts say this IRS-calling scam could even be worse than other scams, such as the “Rachael from cardholder services” with the fake offer to lower your credit card rate.

“They are impersonating agents for one of the most powerful government bureaucracies and relying on real taxpayer fear that the IRS will garnish their accounts or wages,” said Edmund Mierzwinski, consumer program director for U.S. PIRG. He said the IRS and the federal government need to do more to put a stop to this IRS-calling scam.

Timothy P. Camus, the deputy inspector general for investigations for TIGTA, said the volume of complaints received by agency’s hotline about the IRS impersonation scam is unprecedented in the 15-year history of TIGTA.

Camus said the scam involving IRS impersonators is ongoing, even in spite of vigilant efforts by federal, state and local law enforcement to educate taxpayers.

I’d argue that this scam, like many, keeps going because the threat of getting caught does not appear great.

It’s clearly not enough anymore to simply warn consumers to just hang up. It’s time that someone in authority forces the scammers to hang it up.

Contact Susan Tompor: 313-222-8876 or stompor@freepresss.com. Follow her on Twitter @tompor.

http://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2014/10/16/irs-phone-call-scam/17330225/