Impostor scams where the scammers pose as IRS agents, Social Security employees, law enforcement and many others are a staple of scammers.  They often make these calls from large call centers that can be located anywhere in the world.  Through “spoofing” many scammers manipulate Caller ID to make it appear that the call is actually coming from a legitimate source, which makes the scam more believable, but it is still nothing more than a scam.  Over the years I have warned you about many of these scams.

Recently Mehboob Manurali Charania was convicted in Georgia and sentenced to sixteen months in prison as well as fined $240,000 for his participation in a massive call center phone scam that operated out of India.  Charania was among scammers posing on the phone as IRS employees demanding payments as well as posing as authorities threatening call recipients for allegedly failing to pay ficitious taxes and fees associated with student loans and scams in which they lured their victims into paying fees for non-existent grants.

TIPS

You can never be sure when who is really calling you when you receive a phone call so you should never provide personal information to anyone who calls unless you have confirmed that the call is legitimate and it is necessary for you to provide that information.  Remember my motto, “trust me, you can’t trust anyone.”   Merely because your Caller ID may indicate that the call you are receiving is from the IRS or some other legitimate organization, it is a simple matter for a scammer to “spoof” a phone call so that it appears that the call is coming from a legitimate source, when it is not.   It is also important to remember that the the IRS will never call, email or text you to initiate contact regarding income taxes.

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