Stan in Oly, WA
Well-known Member
My wife and I were awakened by a phone call at 5:30 this morning. It was a recorded message claiming to be IRS (not "THE IRS", just "IRS"). It said that this was the final attempt to contact us to tell us that they were filing lawsuit against us (again, not "A lawsuit", just "lawsuit"). Of course I didn't catch the non-native English speaker clues until I played the message back later. The woman spoke without a detectable accent, except for leaving out those articles. (As a matter of possible interest, Russian and related Slavic languages don't have articles.)
I responded with exactly the mindset that the caller hoped for---I started thinking about what it could be about, and how I would go about explaining that it had to be a mistake. Then I started calculating whether it would be too early to call the 202 area code number that the message had left. My wife however, sick and groggy from cold medicine though she was, was more clearheaded. She said, "You know that's a scam, don't you?" I did as soon as she said it.
When I Googled "IRS scam", there was information about the exact type of call we had received. There was a number to call to report it to the Treasury Inspector General's office. When I called that, I was told in a message that if I hadn't lost money or given out personal information, there wasn't even much point reporting it (that's not exactly what the message said, but that's what it meant, I think).
Wouldn't you just like to hunt these people down and beat the hell out of them?
Stan
I responded with exactly the mindset that the caller hoped for---I started thinking about what it could be about, and how I would go about explaining that it had to be a mistake. Then I started calculating whether it would be too early to call the 202 area code number that the message had left. My wife however, sick and groggy from cold medicine though she was, was more clearheaded. She said, "You know that's a scam, don't you?" I did as soon as she said it.
When I Googled "IRS scam", there was information about the exact type of call we had received. There was a number to call to report it to the Treasury Inspector General's office. When I called that, I was told in a message that if I hadn't lost money or given out personal information, there wasn't even much point reporting it (that's not exactly what the message said, but that's what it meant, I think).
Wouldn't you just like to hunt these people down and beat the hell out of them?
Stan