Warnings on the fraudulent use of the IRS name.
Jury Duty Scam
Most of us take notices for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out that a new kind of fraud has come up. The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you say that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she can check and cancel the arrest warrant. Tell them any of this information and your have had your identity stolen.
So far this has happened in 11 states and is particularly bad because they threaten you by pretending they are with the court system. The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites
Substitute Form 1040 Fax Scam
This scam consists of a cover letter and form that are faxed, rather than e-mailed. The cover letter is addressed “Dear Valued Tax Payer (sic)” and appears to be signed by an IRS employee. The letter says that the IRS is updating its files and that recipients who supply the requested information will receive a nominal tax refund. It also states that those who fail to immediately return the completed form risk additional tax and withholding. The attached form is labeled a substitute Form 1040 and is titled “Certificate of Current Status of Beneficial Owner For United States Tax Recertification & Withholding.” It requests a large amount of detailed personal and financial information, such as mother’s maiden name (often used in security screening), bank account numbers, estimated assets and more. It asks the recipient to sign and fax back the completed form, as well as a copy of the recipient’s driver’s license and passport.
The letter, signature and form are all fraudulent. Moreover, the IRS does not send unsolicited faxes to taxpayers and does not request such detailed personal and financial information.
This is a variant of earlier scams. For more information, see news releases IR-2004-104 and IR-2004-75
Tax Court Scam
In this scam, an e-mail that appears to come from the U.S. Tax Court contains a petition involving a court case between the IRS and the recipient. The document instructs the recipient to download other files. The downloads transfer malware, or malicious code, to the recipient's computer.
There are various types of malware, which, for example, can hijack a victim's computer hard drive to give someone remote access to the computer, or can search for passwords and other information and send them to the scammer.
The truth is that the Tax Court is not e-mailing notices to anyone who currently has a case before the court. Visit the court's Web site at http://www.ustaxcourt.gov/ for more information. Recipients are advised to avoid clicking on any links in the e-mail and to delete the e-mail.
