Tax Guru – Ker$tetter Letter

I doubt there is anybody left in this country who hasn’t received a phony demand for money from scammers posing as IRS agents, whether by phone, email or snail mail.  I have been forwarding at least one such scam email to IRS’s special email address (phising@irs.gov) each week. 

Just as with other such scam emails, I have always been curious as to whether the crooks are ever caught.  This recent story about the arrest of three men in Georgia (USA, not Russia) and one in Illinois, with connections to a bigger organized crime operation in India, is a good sign that at least a few of the bad guys are being caught. 

With fake IDs, three Georgia men collected $666,537, prosecutors say

What is most mind boggling about these scammers is the fact that they allegedly conned 7,314 people to send them a total of almost $3.5 million for fictitious taxes.  Considering that this was just one gang, there have to be several others running the same kind of scam.  With all of the publicity about these scams, it’s a bit amazing that there are so many gullible folks who fall for it.  

IRS has a useful guide to dealing with these scams on their website that has been growing in size as more and more people get into this extremely lucrative criminal activity.

Tax Scams / Consumer Alerts