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Identity Theft Scheme Involving E-mails
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You get an email from the Internal Revenue Service informing you that you are under investigation for tax fraud and are subject to criminal prosecution. Once you have started breathing again, you read further and get to the good news. According to the e-mail, there is an IRS web site that can help your investigation if you provide certain personal and financial information. You go the web site, which is certainly official looking, and think about entering the requested data, including your social security and driver's license numbers, and bank and credit card information. But then you see a grammatical error in the web site text, and a bell goes off in your head. Fortunately, you contact your local IRS office before doing anything else.
Both the email and the web site are part of a scheme used by identity thieves to take over the unsuspecting victims' financial information, run up charges on already existing credit cards, and apply for loans or additional credits cards in the victims' names.
One web site has been shut down at the request of the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, but new even more official-appearing versions of the scam could surface at any time. The IRS warns all individuals that it never uses emails to contact taxpayers concerning their accounts. A genuine IRS communication will be on official IRS stationery in an IRS envelope. Any letter from the IRS will contain a contact phone number, and taxpayers are encouraged to call the IRS if they believe that they have received a suspect communication.
Copyright 2009 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
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