"IRS" telephone scam
 

My "Villages" mom (92 years old) asked me to come over to listen to a voicemail message that she received this morning, that alarmed her. It came from area code 202 (Washington, DC). The caller was a woman who claimed to be an officer of the IRS. It warned that the call should not be ignored and that if it was, some type of legal action was likely. I was pretty certain that this was a scam, and confirmed it online. I called the Sumter Cty Sheriff's office to report it, and was told that it was the 7th call on this subject that they received on it. In fact, the fellow in the Sheriff's office said he, personally, had received the same call.

If you get any suspicious calls such as this, don't pick up the phone and don't return the call. If you are concerned that the call might be legit, call the official info number of the agency involved.

Thanks for the timely advice. People, especially the elderly, just can't be too careful these days.

We received the same scam call at our CT home. The IRS would never call if there was an issue, a letter possibly requiring a signature would be how they would handle it.

The local IRS offices call when they want to do an audit. Caller ID comes up as IRS and the first two times I ignored thinking it was a scam. I called back when we received the third call.

You get a letter if it's a simple thing that they think requires only a missing document. If they want to sit down with you, one on one, they call. It isn't always a scam. When the Agent walked into the house, we asked for all her credentials to make sure she was legitimate. One of the top 5 worse days of our lives and was an error on their part by an answer they gave me when I called. I recorded the persons name and badge number.

This was in 2012 and they may no longer call. Back then, not all calls from IRS are a scam.

Any phone call that says they are the IRS is a scam. Ignore the call!

Another new scam is an email from Easypass that looks real. Informing you failed to pay on a toll road. Includes a downloadable form to pay the fines thru pay pal. The email I received looked very real. I checked with Mass DOT. Their site put up a warning of the hoax emailings

No it is not!
 

That is how it came up on caller ID in 2012. We were given a legitimate audit, in our home, and it lasted a total of 2 full days and 3 partial days split over a month. When the Agent called to set up times to return with notes from the phone call we made when we did our 2010 return, IRS again showed up on caller ID. It was from the local Harrisburg, PA office.