The Brentwood Police Department have issued a warning to citizens this morning regarding calls impersonating IRS collection agents.
The phone calls have been from a 202 area code, which is Washington DC. The caller identifies themselves as an IRS collection agent working with the FBI. The caller is very persistent stating that they are calling regarding unpaid taxes and to avoid potential prosecution the debt needs to be settled immediately.
If you receive such a call, keep in mind you would have already received an official collection notice from the IRS if you had pending overdue tax issues. Do not provide the caller with any of your personal information, such as Social Security numbers, bank account numbers or debit card numbers. Simply hang up on the person.
Police Departments throughout the nation receive an influx of fraud scams and mail theft reports. Take extra caution with your outgoing and received mail during this time. Many sensitive documents sent from employers, investments and loans contain personal information that identity thieves love to get their hands on.
If you see suspicious or unfamiliar subjects and vehicles in your neighbor hoods, please call the police at 925-778-2441
6 comments
I got a phone call on my cell phone last Friday and it said, “We are calling from the IRS and the reason we are calling is we are trying to find you. We have a lawsuit against you”. They wanted us to call a 202 or a 213 #. I hung up and called my tax person and she said there are a lot of scams out right now. The # was blocked. Showed lots of zeros and they never called back so far.
We’re getting calls from these idiots. We have caller ID, we don’t pick up the phone and have blocked their number.
Blocking the number won’t provide complete relief as these criminals are spoofing numbers and probably rotating the number that comes up on caller ID regularly.
Signing up your number at NoMoRobo.com does seem to help. They don’t support all carriers, but they do have AT&T and Comcast for sure. We switched to Comcast a few months ago and most of the time the scammers are blocked before it displays a number and very rarely does one these criminals get thru (with AT&T the phone typically would ring once and then block them). NoMoRobo is free; I’d actually pay for it if needed because they really do dramatically reduce the interruptions.
Anon Too, I tried to subscribe with NoMoRobo.com. They accept AT&T, but they’re not taking any new landlines. I guess they have too many subscribers.
Nick – Sorry to hear you couldn’t get signed up. I just looked at their FAQ and it appears that you have to have U-Verse phone service for it to work with AT&T. They use a special forwarding feature on VOIP lines that hangs up on your behalf if the number is on their screening list.
There are call blockers available from Amazon and newer Panasonic phone systems will let you block 250 numbers…The standalone blockers are available for around $100 and can deal with thousands of numbers.
We’ve gone from 7-10 crap calls a day down to none most days between the Panasonic phone and NoMoRobo. Every now and again one slips thru, but it’s not often.
A solution is out there!
Anon Too, we do have AT&T U-Verse. I’ll research further, and hopefully it will work. If not, purchasing something will probably be worth it. Thanks!
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