A couple of years ago, Sam Antar shared a recording of his conversation with a fake IRS agent with us. The poor dope on the other end of the line didn't know what hit him.
What's been quite amazing is that the calls from fake IRS agents seems to be getting worse since the agency warned the public about the "pervasive telephone scam" back in October 2013. Two weeks ago, the Service announced that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has received 896,000 complaints since that initial release and there has been over 5,000 victims and $26.5 million lost as a result of these scams.
Despite the IRS and plenty of reports explaining how to know if one of these calls is bogus, here's another statement from an IRS employee telling a local TV station in Michigan what the IRS won't do:
"If you get a call from us and you’re not expecting one, it’s probably not us," Luis Garcia from the IRS told FOX 17 News on Monday. "The IRS isn’t going to threaten to arrest you or threaten to kick down your door or foreclose on your mortgage, take your driver’s license away, or deport you if you do not pay your taxes."
While all that may be news to Ted Cruz, as accountants, we all should know that if someone calls and tells us that the IRS has a warrant out for our arrest, it's malarkey. I guess it's possible there's a dense CPA out there that would believe he/she needs to pay some mystery back taxes with a prepaid debit card to avoid being arrested or deported or whatever, but I kinda doubt it.
And if a CPA did get duped, it's not like he or she could tell anyone about it. If they did, they'd literally die from the embarrassment. If they managed to survive that, Barry Melancon would get wind of it and subject the person to a public shaming, revoke their CPA license and then, maybe if he felt like it, foreclose on their mortgage and deport them.
But come on, no accountant has fallen for one of these calls, right? RIGHT?
