IRS Phone Scam Dupes Manassas Man

MANASSAS, VA — A man may have duped Saturday by a caller claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service, say Manassas Police.

The caller told the victim, a 46-year-old male of the 8700 block of Ditmars Court, he owed a large amount of money to the IRS and instructed him to deposit the payment as cash into a bank account the caller provided, which the victim did.

Then a bit later, the caller contacted the victim again and demanded more payment in the form of gift cards, and the victim obliged.

But then the victim smelled a rat and contacted police.

IRS phone scams have been around for quite some time, and the IRS would like you to know the following:

• The IRS never asks for credit card, debit card or prepaid card information over the telephone.
• The IRS never insists that taxpayers use a specific payment method to pay tax obligations
• The IRS never requests immediate payment over the telephone and will not take enforcement action immediately following a phone conversation. Taxpayers usually receive prior notification of IRS enforcement action involving IRS tax liens or levies.

Too, National Public Radio recently had a segment about the IRS scam, including a nugget that the fake IRS call center is based in a Seattle suburb, "but that could just be a proxy. Pindrop researchers say the ring is hard to pinpoint because it has tools to hide the physical location and the money trail."

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