Seattle Police are warning locals about a new series of threatening fraudulent phone calls from people posing as police officers and IRS agents. Check out more from the police blotter post below:
On Thursday, March 20th, a woman received several phone calls from as many as three different men, who identified themselves as Seattle police officers and claimed they had a warrant for the victim for “unpaid taxes.”
In the first call—which came from an out of state number—one of the suspects said the victim could pay $1,900 with her credit card to cancel the warrant or have police come to her home and arrest her.
The victim did not provide the suspect with a credit card number.
The victim later received a second call from a man, claiming to be the first suspect’s supervisor. This time, the scammers demanded $2,900 to quash the fabricated warrant. Again, the victim refused.
The suspects kept calling and, in one final phone call, demanded $5,000. Again, the victim refused to pay the man and later called 911 to report the strange series of phone calls.
Police also received two other similar reports on Thursday, including one from a man who said a suspect claiming to be a US Treasury Agent called him said he needed to pay his 2010 federal income tax. The victim told the suspect he’d already paid his 2010 taxes, hung up, and called police.
In September police investigated a series of similar calls, in which a suspect posing as a Seattle police officer conned a man out of $600 worth of “Green Dot Moneypak” reloadable debit cards, which are frequently used in fraud cases.
Remember: law enforcement officials will never call you and demand payment for back taxes, a warrant fee or any other sort of bill over the phone.
If you or someone you know has been targeted in a similar scam, please call 911 to make a report or contact SPD’s Fraud Unit at (206) 684-8981.
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Since I hate paying taxes, I’m pretty safe from these scams.
As someone who used to work for the IRS, I can tell you that they do make outcalls to request payment of back taxes. Anyone who tells you they don’t doesn’t know what they are talking about. To protect yourself, you should look up a known IRS phone number at IRS.gov and call them back yourself. Any IRS agent would give you no hassle at all if you requested to call them back on a number you looked up yourself.
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