To us, it's a scam; to him, it's a job.....

[Sara S]

Please tell your friends about this; immigrants are especially targeted.


from The Press Democrat

By REKHA BASU

Published: Monday, March 17, 2014 at 3:00 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, March 14, 2014 at 6:42 p.m.


The calls started late last fall, around the time the Internal Revenue Service issued a warning about a sophisticated phone scam from IRS impersonators that targeted immigrants in particular. The callers, male and female, claimed to be IRS investigators. “The second you receive this message I need you or your retained attorney of record to return the call,” they said. “The issue at hand is extremely time sensitive.”

A fake name and badge number were given, along with a number to call and this ominous warning, “If you don't return the call and if I don't hear from your attorney either, then the only thing I can do is wish you good luck as the situation badly unfolds on you.”

Last week, after having gotten five or six such messages, I called back. It was a Buffalo, N.Y., area code, but that means little, since the scammers apparently can access any area code by phoning over the Internet. The man who picked up answered to Ian Morgan. As with the other IRS imposters calling me with names such as Mike Jones, Jason Miller and Jennifer Williams, he had an Indian accent. Being of Indian origin, I can tell.

He said an IRS audit showed my income was higher than what I had declared, accusing, “You tried to defraud the IRS.” I asked him how much I had declared and what he thought my real income was, but he said he wasn't authorized to say. He gave me 45 minutes to have my attorney call him. I told him I didn't have one, and he'd have to deal with me.

“I'm not comfortable with you,” he declared. I prodded him about his true motives, telling him I was a journalist — and it was surprising how fast “Ian Morgan” folded.

“I'm not working for the IRS,” he finally admitted. He said he's Indian, in the final semester of his MBA, and earns $50,000 a month this way. He said there are thousands like him doing it all over the world, that it's been going on four or five years and no one has yet been arrested.