PANAMA CITY — A phone scam by fraudsters pretending to be IRS officials has hit home with a surge of recent victims in Bay County.
“It scared me,” said Penny, a waitress on Panama City Beach. “He told me I could pay money that afternoon or be arrested and go to court. I didn’t realize it was a scheme.”
Due to the embarrassment of her ordeal, Penny asked that only her first name be used.
The Treasury Inspector General for Taxpayer Administration (TIGTA) warned taxpayers earlier this year of unsolicited phone calls from individuals claiming to represent the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The callers intended to defraud taxpayers out of hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Penny returned a phone call on Friday that still has her reeling from how quickly a complete stranger duped her out of nearly all the money she’d set aside to help get through the winter season when she’s unemployed.
“Once he started talking about arresting me and got me on the emotional level, I was gullible,” she said.
Penny wasn’t surprised to get calls from the IRS since she’d fallen behind on filing her taxes in recent years.
“I was expecting something like that might possibly happen,” she said. “Everything that he put out there just coincided with some things happening with my life.”
The caller told Penny she and her husband owed $5,900, which sounded feasible once she factored in interest and penalties.
Fraudulent callers directly call taxpayers or leave messages informing them they owe taxes. When fraudsters get the victim on the phone, they tell the victim they must pay using a pre-paid debit card or wire transfer. If the victim doesn’t comply, the scammer threatens that a refusal to pay will result in arrest, deportation, loss of a business or driver’s license.
“I should have known better because the IRS sends out registered mail,” she said. “It still just went right over my head.”
The caller gained Penny’s confidence by giving her a number to call and verify his identity, which consisted of a bogus name and IRS case number. When that checked out, Penny got another call from a number that showed up as the IRS on her caller ID.
Then the fraudster started instructing Penny specifically on what to do to avoid jail.
“He wanted me to go and get a Green Dot card,” she said.
He also insisted that Penny put herself on speaker phone and tell no one who she was talking to.
“He made it sound like it was my personal business, and I wouldn’t want others to know this was happening to me,” she said.
Penny was so distracted by what was happening that she did as the caller said. She dropped her phone down into her purse still on speaker so the caller could listen in as she went into a CVS and purchased three of the Green Dot pre-paid debit cards for amounts totaling $1,100.
“As soon as I got in my car, he wanted me to scratch off the cards and gave him the numbers off the back,” she said. He also wanted the time stamped on the receipt and cashier’s name.
The IRS usually first contacts taxpayers by mail about unpaid taxes. They rarely do so by phone and never ask for payment using a pre-paid debit card or wire transfer, or ask for a credit card number by phone.
The total amount of time it took the caller to scam Penny out of $1,100 was a little over an hour from the first time they spoke, until she was sitting in the CVS parking lot scratching off cards for the taunting caller.
Ted Rybicki is concerned senior citizens are prime targets for such scams.
“The mantra is never, ever give out your Social Security number or your credit card number,” said the 84-year-old Lynn Haven resident. “Don’t give out information over the phone to a stranger.”
Rybicki came home to a message on his answering machine recently . It was a recording saying it was a final notice from the IRS to inform him that a lawsuit was being filed against him. The message urged him to call a number for more information.
But Rybicki called his accountant Bill Steiner instead to leave a question inquiring about the legitimacy of the call he’d received.
The next message on Rybicki’s machine was a frantic call back from Steiner
“No! That is not a good call. It’s a scam,” Steiner said in his message.
Steiner told Rybicki to not return the call or send them money. He also said Rybicki was his fourth client to receive those calls recently.
Penny wishes she’d asked someone for advice before giving in to the fraudster’s demands.
“He just caught me in an ignorant moment and I paid for it dearly,” she said.
Need to report a suspicious call?
- If you’ve received a call from someone impersonating an IRS representative, report the scam to the IRS by calling 800-829-1040 if you may owe tax money. If you don’t owe taxes, report the incident to TIGTA at 800-366-4484. You can forward scam emails to phishing@irs.gov