Lawrence County Sheriff’s Deputies warn of IRS phone scam

Demand that you pay taxes without giving you the opportunity to question or appeal the amount they say you owe.

The Summit County Sheriff’s Office is reporting a scam that has resurfaced during the past few weeks. “Sometimes we’ve heard that they’re either trying to have the victim reveal identity information or have them send money”.

Sheriff Wm. C. Brueggemann says in the case of the recent local fraud incident, the caller ID numbers came up as the numbers from the Cass County Sheriff’s Department and the Internal Revenue Service in calls placed by the scammer. “If you don’t know who you’re talking to, hang up the phone”, says Ann Harkins with the National Crime Prevention Council.

These scam artists may threaten police arrest, deportation or license revocation and leave “urgent” callback requests, sometimes through “robo-calls”, via phone or email. “Don’t provide any information over the phone”.

-Never trust callers who use threats and hostility to bully their targets into doing what they want.

The scam isn’t new, but several 10News viewers have contacted us recently saying that scammers have called them pretending to be from the IRS.

“We’ll talk to you and tell you whether we believe it’s a scam or not”, he said.