11:57pm May 19, 2015

Australian Friends Please Share; ATO scam.

erinkyan:

commander-diomika:

Hey followers, there’s a scam going around in Melbourne/Australia where someone calls pretending to be from the Australian Tax Office telling you’ve been audited and there’s a warrant out for you arrest for tax evasion. You’ll have to deal with it in court and have a criminal record for the rest of your days. OR you can settle the matter out of court by giving them a very specific, itemised amount of money that added up to approximately 6k, TODAY OR GO TO JAIL.

It was extremely organised and official sounding; I asked for verification and was passed through several people, as well as receiving a phone call that appeared on my caller ID as the Tax Office toll free number.

Alarm bells began to ring when they needed me to physically get the cash, without hanging up the phone on threat of the arrest warrant going out, and then they would tell me what ATO account to deposit it in. They kept threatening that the criminal record would ruin my life, my credit rating, they’d tell my employers, repossess my car/house, and I was extremely scared.

Thank goodness I accidentally hung up on him (after I’d gotten 5k out of my bank account) and then got back to the ATO proper and they assured me it was bogus.

Now, I’m relatively bureaucracy literate, and English is my first language. This scam was terrifyingly well organised. When I threatened to go to the police I got another call from a fake cop; it would be really easy for this scam to work.

Apparently they’ve been talking about it on the radio but I don’t listen to much mainstream media; Australian followers please share to get word around.

My partner works in the fraud section of a bank and has told me about this scam doing the rounds, so adding my voice to confirm that this is a common scam at the moment. A truly horrible one, that gets a lot of people.
If you get this call and you are worried, hang up on them and then call the ATO directly (NOT using the number in your phone, get their number off their website).
Also the ATO like to be told when scams are going around, so hanging up and calling them is a good move anyway.

This scam is also going strong in the US. They target people who are older, are immigrants, or are young. They basically target anyone they think might get scared of the IRS. The IRS will not call you and demand money. That’s not how the IRS works. So if you get a phone call from the IRS threatening you or a family member with jail time over taxes, go to this website http://www.irs.gov/uac/Tax-Scams-Consumer-Alerts and follow their instructions. Reporting these people helps them track them down. You’re not in trouble. The IRS doesn’t demand cash. It’s a scam. You’re okay.