Conned

Every so often I receive a call from PA that states that it is the IRS and I am in trouble. I immediately hang up. I know that the IRS will send me something in the mail that tells what the problem is with which income tax return. They won't call me.

Well apparently a very close friend of mine received that call yesterday and they scared her. Told her that she had committed a crime with tax evasion and if she didn't pay them today the police would be called to arrest her. Well, if you look on the tax site it says that they do not call the local police so I suspect that they use this tactic with many people. She is a smart woman but he successfully argued every point she made. He had her go to the store and purchase ITune cards to pay part of her tax bill or face arrest. After she did that she realized how stupid it was and really started questioning the whole thing. He told her to go back to the store and get more! Thankfully her husband came home and stopped the conversation. She lost $1000. That was a large majority of her emergency savings. Afterwards she realized how stupid it was and is shocked that she did it. She has anxiety and he played into that. She called ITunes and they closed the account that the money went into but the money was already gone. She was told that many people have sent money and that they will just create a new account and that they are from overseas. She has lost that money. Her bank fraud protection does not cover this because she authorized it. ITunes can't do anything for her.

I had another friend tell me that she received a call from someone stating that her son was arrested and she needed to bail him out. However, when they said she needed to go buy ITune cards to do so she realized that it was a scam. So be aware. If someone calls you and says you owe money for any reason, if they want you to pay with ITune cards it is a con.

Today my friend is beating herself up. She feels so embarrassed that she fell for it and worried that she no longer has an emergency fund. Obviously many people fall for these scams and the people who do them are very good at it.

And yes I once received a letter from the IRS. I owed some small amount for taxes paid a few years before. It stated all my tax information and computed the difference owed and of course added interest. They did not want ITune cards, I sent a check to the IRS.