WASHINGTON ? The Internal Revenue Service today warned consumers about a sophisticated phone scam targeting taxpayers, including recent immigrants, throughout the country.

Victims are told they owe money to the IRS and it must be paid promptly through a pre-loaded debit card or wire transfer. If the victim refuses to cooperate, they are then threatened with arrest, deportation or suspension of a business or driver?s license. In many cases, the caller becomes hostile and insulting.

?This scam has hit taxpayers in nearly every state in the country.  We want to educate taxpayers so they can help protect themselves.  Rest assured, we do not and will not ask for credit card numbers over the phone, nor request a pre-paid debit card or wire transfer,? says IRS Acting Commissioner Danny Werfel. ?If someone unexpectedly calls claiming to be from the IRS and threatens police arrest, deportation or license revocation if you don?t pay immediately, that is a sign that it really isn?t the IRS calling.? Werfel noted that the first IRS contact with taxpayers on a tax issue is likely to occur via mail
Other characteristics of this scam include:
Scammers use fake names and IRS badge numbers. They generally use common names and surnames to identify themselves.
Scammers may be able to recite the last four digits of a victim?s Social Security Number.
Scammers spoof the IRS toll-free number on caller ID to make it appear that it?s the IRS calling.
Scammers sometimes send bogus IRS emails to some victims to support their bogus calls.
Victims hear background noise of other calls being conducted to mimic a call site.
After threatening victims with jail time or driver?s license revocation, scammers hang up and others soon call back pretending to be from the local police or DMV, and the caller ID supports their claim.
If you get a phone call from someone claiming to be from the IRS, here?s what you should do:
If you know you owe taxes or you think you might owe taxes, call the IRS at 1.800.829.1040. The IRS employees at that line can help you with a payment issue ? if there really is such an issue.
If you know you don?t owe taxes or have no reason to think that you owe any taxes (for example, you?ve never received a bill or the caller made some bogus threats as described above), then call and report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 1.800.366.4484.
If you?ve been targeted by this scam, you should also contact the Federal Trade Commission and use their ?FTC Complaint Assistant? at FTC.gov.  Please add "IRS Telephone Scam" to the comments of your complaint.
Taxpayers should be aware that there are other unrelated scams (such as a lottery sweepstakes) and solicitations (such as debt relief) that fraudulently claim to be from the IRS.
The IRS encourages taxpayers to be vigilant against phone and email scams that use the IRS as a lure. The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email to request personal or financial information.  This includes any type of electronic communication, such as text messages and social media channels. The IRS also does not ask for PINs, passwords or similar confidential access information for credit card, bank or other financial accounts. Recipients should not open any attachments or click on any links contained in the message. Instead, forward the e-mail to phishing@irs.gov.

More information on how to report phishing scams involving the IRS is available on the genuine IRS website, IRS.gov.

http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS-Warns-of-Pervasive-Telephone-Scam

Got the same call from from someone saying they were from the IRS. he said i was being charged on 3 counts, later he said the charges had to do with money laundering cos i had sent money via western union and had not reported to irs. He threatened me with deportation, passports of my wife and family to be confiscated within 45 munites. When i told him i was on the other line with IRS to confirm then he hanged up

BEAWARE if anyone calls from this number. If you act scared, he is gonna call you again and also have some one using some act like calling from the local deputy sheriff waiting to execute arrest warrant against you. Do not fall for it. You could complain to local authority. Best thing is not to answer the call, and if you do, just hang up saying you would call back IRS.

BTW, first call was little bit threatening, and browsing the web I found this. Second call looked like it came from the local deputy sheriff office threatening to arrest me. Later called in Sheriff only to know that they had spoofed their caller-id look like it came from their office. A local Sheriff helped me and case has been registered.

Caller identified as IRS official..also had an associate who mocked as a local county Sheriff.

Call and also report to

www.treasury.gov/tigta/

Reported to authorities.

We got call today pretending to be IRS office and was brave enough to pretend as IRS calling.....We will be investigating and report it to Law enforcement.

Hi I got the same style call probably Friday sometime.

It went to the voice mail since we were not home.  When I called back there was a recording saying it is the IRS Office for Criminal Investigation !!

Could someone please advise what is the best approach to handle this and report it to the proper authorities..

Thanks for your response in advace.

Caller ID had PRO RES OFC ( pretending to be Office of Professional Responsibility) and the Phone # was 1-800-829-1040 ( pretending to be IRS hotline). Voice mail was asking us to call back @ 202-509-0681 and the contact person was Kevin James/Jones - Criminal Investigations Officer. When we called back, the way the Officer spoke was not sounding right, though he quoted Internal Revenue code and the read out the list of violations with respective code. The crime charged is money laundering with the intent to evade tax.  As we were on the phone, we were checking the IRS website also and somehow landed on the page for Tax scams where there was an article about this Telephone scam. But we couldn't ignore also as the Caller ID was looking genuine and the threats from the Officer like Arrest, Deport, fine of 245,000 etc.. really got us. Looks like immigrants are being targeted, especially the ones who became US citizens recently. Most of the immigrants send money outside US regularly to support their relatives back home which is being targeted for this scam. This call really got us as we started to believe, may be we missed something.. A day of our life went in calling IRS hotline, our CPA, and in looking for Local Taxpayer Advocate to confirm that this is really a scam. Finally we came across this blog that gave us the relief.
But he does seems to know our Phone information, our address and our last 4 digits of SSN. We did not give out the full SSN luckily. But who knows he might be having that also. Please visit irs.gov and register your Phone numbers in the National registry for donotcall list. Hope we are not victims of Identity theft.
Thanks you bloggers.