Following an exhaustive three year joint investigation by numerous federal agencies  led by the Justice Department, indictments were announced Thursday of 56 people and 5 illegal call centers accused of posing as IRS agents, calling unsuspecting victims in the United States and threatening them if they did not pay phony tax bills. Although the people indicted, including 20 who have already been arrested, were in both the United States and India, the call centers were all located in Ahmedabad India.  The alleged scammers obtained the names of their potential victims from various legitimate data brokers.  These indictments were not related to the police raid earlier this month in India which resulted in the arrest of 70 people charged similarly.

According to the Justice Department,the scammers used a network of co-conspirators in the United States to launder the funds obtained from the victims, most commonly through prepaid debit cards or wire transfers.  The prepaid debit cards were laundered using information stolen from thousands of identity theft victims.  The biggest amount paid by a victim of this scam was paid by a Californian who paid $136,000 to the scammers.

TIPS

This scam is easy to avoid.  Don’t trust your Caller ID because by using a technique called spoofing, a scammer can make his or her call appear to be from the IRS on your Caller ID.  Trust me, you can’t trust anyone.  The easiest way to recognize if a call from the IRS demanding money is a scam is to be aware of the fact that the IRS will never initiate contact with a taxpayer to collect overdue taxes by a phone call, email or text message. Any such communication is from a scammer so you should just ignore it.   Additionally, unlike the IRS, the scammers often demand that payments be made immediately by prepaid debit cards, wired funds or even iTunes gift cards, which is something that the IRS will never do.