Waterford Police Warn Residents of IRS Scams

Post from Waterford Police Department:

• Scam alert - Numerous phone scams - “Government Entity”, “IRS”, and computer scams taking place in the area. Please share.

• The Waterford Police Department has been receiving numerous complaints of scam telephone calls in our area recently.

• One call is from a “Daniel Baxter” from a “Government Entity” from 818-863-9204. Baxter tells call recipients that he is from a Government entity, and they need to give him access to their monetary accounts to avoid getting in a “mess.”

• Another is a call from an “IRS Agent”, that asks for access to one of your monetary accounts to avoid a “tax problem.”

• The third is a scam in which a caller from a computer company - “Microsoft”, etc, asks for access to your computer to perform an update, or fix a “problem they have seen”. If access to the computer is granted, the scammers will place malware on your computer that allows them to access it at a later time, stealing your account numbers and information stored on your device.

As always, we ask that you never share information over the phone (birth dates, social security numbers, computer access, etc). If YOU have initiated contact with a company, and choose to give out the information based on your judgement, that’s up to you, but never give it out to a person making an unsolicited call to you.

Please share the information in this post with those you know that do not have a Facebook account, or those without access to a computer - especially seniors, who are frequently targeted, and most worried about these calls.

Remember — if it sounds wrong to you, it generally is.

Photo: Waterford Police Department