IRS impostors target college students.
Does it sound weird that someone is yelling at you on the phone and demanding that you immediately pay up for a “federal student tax” right now? Yep, it’s a scam.
After ripping off the elderly and immigrants, con artists put together a new twist on an old scam to trick college students into thinking they need to cough up cash to cover a “federal student tax.”
No such thing. No one owes any money for a “federal student tax” because there is no such tax. But the crooks are using the term anyway to scare people to pay up.
The April tax season is long gone, but bullies run a year-round business where it can pay to be nasty to people who are already too afraid of doing the wrong thing.
Another scam that’s likely to get hotter this summer: Demand for quick payments on iTunes gift cards and other gift cards.
The crooks making the bogus phone calls sound convincing. Some millennials and others have rushed to put anywhere from $500 to $1,500 on the plastic prepaid cards sold at drug stores and mega-discount chains.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration warned last week that scammers are now trying to persuade potential victims to put cash on all sorts of gift cards to pay bogus bills — not just iTunes gift cards. The victim reads the scammer the numbers off the card to give scammers access to the money.
Melissa Humphries, 34, who lives near Tulsa, Okla., said she rushed out to a Walgreens store to put $500 on an iTunes gift card on Tuesday after someone impersonating an IRS agent called her at work.
“I’m a single parent and they said I was being investigated for tax fraud from 2010 to 2015 to the tune of $7,986 and in a few hours a warrant for my arrest was going to be issued,” she said.
The caller agreed to take $500 to settle up, but now she’s out the money. She paid up, she said, because she didn’t want to be away from her children if she was sent to jail.
Luis D. Garcia, a spokesman for the IRS in Detroit, said the college scam is particularly unusual because the callers mention a tax that doesn’t even exist.
Garcia said some students at Michigan State University in East Lansing reported that the calls sounded particularly convincing last spring. One twist: The fraudsters claimed that they were with the FBI and calling on behalf of the IRS. The caller ID seemed to back up the FBI story.
“They were using the real phone number of the FBI office,” Garcia said.
The crooks told disbelieving students to Google the phone number. But Garcia said the phone number was spoofed to look legitimate. Of course, the closest the callers might get to the FBI is possibly one day showing up on a most-wanted list.
Young consumers who don’t know much about tax rules might even believe something as bogus as a “federal student tax.” But seriously, why would the federal government tax students, people who already cannot pay some bills because they’re overstretched by student loans and credit card debt?
In some cases, con artists made calls look legitimate by spoofing phone numbers of the university student aid office, again, with the goal of acquiring personal information.
“These scams and schemes continue to evolve nationwide, and now they’re trying to trick students,” said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in a statement.
Nationwide, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reported that impostor scams generated more than $38.7 million from 6,747 victims from October 2013 through May 31.
The No. 1 state: California with about $8.1 million lost to 1,235 victims. The next top four states: New York, Texas, Florida and New Jersey.
Michigan ranked No 10 with 242 reported victims losing nearly $1.2 million over nearly three years, according to the data.
What’s particularly intriguing is that the con artists know how to tailor their phone calls to their potential victims. It appears that the fraudsters have a strategy — maybe using phone lists or other lists with someone’s age and other personal data — that enables them to know if they’re calling a college student, an older person or an immigrant.
“It’s a very sophisticated operation,” Garcia said.
IRS impostors threaten immigrants with immediate deportation or arrest. To avoid trouble, they say, you must come up with cash now and put that money on a Green Dot Prepaid Card or iTunes card. Or the con artists could ask you to send that money via Western Union or Money-Gram.
One of the threats to older consumers: Revoking their driver’s licenses, if they don’t rush to the store immediately and put the money they allegedly owe on a gift card or prepaid card.
Best move: Hang up on these jokers. One can go to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration scam page to report the call. See www.treasury.gov/ tigta for information on reporting scams.
Scam artists do what they can to sound legitimate. They use automated robocalls, sometimes already know the last four digits of your Social Security number and can make caller ID information appear as if it’s from the FBI, the IRS or U.S. Treasury.
The IRS reports that some schemes focus less on threats and more on sounding, well, rather helpful.
Some fraudsters call under the guise of needing to “verify” tax return information over the phone. The scam artists — who supposedly are looking at your tax return — want to know your Social Security number or where you bank.
Or you might get an official looking e-mail. Again, the idea is to get you off guard and trick you into quickly giving information so that you get your tax refund soon or some other such nonsense.
The IRS said fraudsters more frequently want personal tax information, which crooks can use later to file false tax returns to steal refund cash.
The IRS had shut down its “Get Transcript” online program back in May 2015 after criminals had gained access to thousands of tax records via the IRS system.