Gift Card Scams: Don’t let scammers ruin your holidays!
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would like you to not let scammers ruin your holidays!
GIFT CARD SCAMS THAT CON ARTISTS COMMONLY USE DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON
During the year-end holidays season, thieves use the following scams. They may:
- Ask you to pay a fake tax bill with gift cards.
- Use a compromised email account to send emails requesting gift card purchases for friends, family, or co-workers.
HOW GIFT CARD SCAMMERS OPERATE?
Scammers operate in the following ways. They will:
- Request gift cards over the phone, by text message, email or through social media.
- Pretend to be from the IRS. This is known as a government impersonation scam.
- Call you or leave a voicemail message with a callback number to inform you that you are linked to some criminal activity.
- Threaten or harass you by telling you that you must pay a fictitious tax penalty.
- Instruct you to buy gift cards from various stores.
- Ask you to provide the number and the PIN of the gift card that you just bought.
Example: A scammer calls you to tell you that your identity has been stolen and that someone used it to open fake bank accounts.
HOW YOU CAN TELL WHETHER IT IS REALLY THE IRS THAT IS CALLING?
What the real IRS does
The IRS will first mail a bill to you if you owe taxes.
What the real IRS doesn’t do
The IRS will never:
- Call you to demand immediate payment using a specific payment method such as a gift card, prepaid debit card or wire transfer.
- Demand that you pay taxes without giving you the opportunity to question or appeal the amount that you owe. You should be aware of your rights as a taxpayer.
- Ask you to make a payment to a person or organization other than the U.S. Treasury.
- Threaten to bring in local police, immigration officers or other law enforcement to have you arrested for not paying your taxes.
- Threaten to revoke your driver’s license, business licenses or immigration status.
WHAT TO DO IF YOU ARE A VICTIM OF A SCAM?
If you believe that you’ve been targeted by a scammer, you should:
- Use the IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting webpage or call (800)366-4484 to report it to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
- Use the FTC Complaint Assistant on FTC.gov to report phone scams to the Federal Trade Commission. Remember to add in the notes “IRS phone scam”.
- Report threatening or harassing telephone calls claiming to be from the IRS to phishing@irs.gov. The subject line of your email should read “IRS phone scam”.
Thousands of taxpayers have lost millions of dollars and their personal information to scams.
In fiscal year 2021, 57,287 cases were reported to the United States Sentencing Commission including 370 cases involving tax fraud.
Characteristic of the offenders:
• Gender of the offenders: 67.9% of tax fraud offenders were men
• Offenders’ race: 52.4% were White, 28.3% were Black, 11.1% were Hispanic, and 8.2% were Other races.
• Average age: 52 years old
• Citizenship: 96.2% are United States citizens
• Prior criminal history: 82.1% has little or no prior criminal history
• Median losses for these offenses: $278,325.
Punishment
The average sentence for tax fraud offenders was 14 months and 63.3% were sentenced to prison.