There has been a lot of press coverage about the scumbags who call or write to people, impersonating IRS agents and demanding payments of fictitious tax debts.  We have received plenty of those communications, as have some of our clients.   So far, nobody that we know has fallen victim to these sleazebags.  However, it appears that many people have forked over some serious amounts of money to those a-holes.

When I receive a scam email from an IRS imposter, I forward the entire email, including any attachments, to the IRS’s special email address, phishing@irs.gov.  Some times I receive an acknowledgement back from IRS, and some times, nothing back.  What we never receive back are details of how well they are doing at tracking down, stopping and prosecuting those criminals. 

Every so often, a story pops up in the press about the progress against the scammers, such as this in USA Today.

Feds charge 56 in fraud scheme that siphoned $300M from 15,000 victims

With the ease of setting up these kinds of scams, it would be foolish to let our guard down just because these particular gangs have been caught.  For every internet criminal who is nabbed, dozens more pop up to take his/her place.

It is interesting to scroll through the actual indictment of these crooks.  Most of the people named are in India, so who knows how many of them the USA can actually catch and prosecute.  There are a fair number of names with USA locations, including several from here in Florida. Hopefully, they are not donors to Hitlery, the Clinton Crime Family Foundation, or the DemonRat Party so they can be prosecuted and severely punished.