Snopes.com had some interesting and timely topics in their most recent weekly newsletter.

FDIC protection – Many people are spreading false info on how this works.

We Deserve It Dividend – Nutty proposal I have already received in several spam emails.

Girls Gone Wild Guru Francis Sues Ex-Accountant – What many call the “Willie Nelson Defense” against tax evasion charges, blaming the CPAs.

Pity The Celebrity Taxpayer – Making the big bucks puts them dead center in the IRS cross-hairs.  The additional publicity IRS receives when busting celebs is a big bonus for their policy of intimidating us normal folks.

Forbes slide-show of some of the recent celebrity tax fights in the news.  Since most IRS audits are technically confidential at the earliest stages, there are obviously many more that we never hear about.

While IRS does offer to deposit refunds directly into taxpayers’ bank accounts, they have never had any facility to post refunds to credit card accounts. Anyone claiming that IRS will apply some money to your credit card is a crook who intends to levy a charge against your credit card account.

Likewise, IRS never sends out refund notices via email. NEVER.

I mention these warnings again because I just received the following email from a client.

Subject: Fw: Notice From Department of the Treasury

I just received another one of these e-mails from the IRS.

When I received the last one I guess I deleted it and could not forward it to you, so here it is.

—– Original Message —–

From: Internal Revenue Service

Sent: Monday, May 05, 2008 2:33 PM

Subject: Notice From Department of the Treasury

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity
we have determined that you are eligible to receive
a tax refund under section 501(c) (3) of the
Internal Revenue Code. Tax refund value is $189.60.
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days
in order to IWP the data received.
If u don’t receive your refund within 9 business
days from the original IRS mailing date shown,
you can start a refund trace online.

If you distribute funds to other organization, your records must show wether
they are exempt under section 497 (c) (15). In cases where the recipient org.
is not exempt under section 497 (c) (15), you must have evidence the funds will
be used for section 497 (c) (15) purposes.

If you distribute fund to individuals, you should keep case histories showing
the recipient’s name and address; the purpose of the award; the maner of
section; and the realtionship of the recipient to any of your officers, directors,
trustees, members, or major contributors.

To access the form for your tax refund, please click here

This notification has been sent by the Internal Revenue Service,
a bureau of the Department of the Treasury.

Sincerely Yours,

John Stewart
Director, Exempt. Organization
Rulings and Agreements Letter
Internal Revenue Service

I wrote back:

Thanks for sending me a copy of that scam email. It’s the same concept, but slightly different from the one I recently discussed on my blog.

Let me know if you receive any more and definitely do not respond to any of them.

Kerry

I was curious to see what the actual scam web page looked like, so I went to it. The URL tells you it is obviously an outright scam; but the crooks have designed it to look quite a bit like an official IRS page.

For those who may not want to risk visiting this site, I snagged a picture of it:

(Click on image for full size)

Calif. Man Accused of Targeting Christians in $25M Nationwide Ponzi Scheme – The classic Ponzi style of scam never goes out of style. And of course, there never seems to be a shortage of fools who fall for what should be obvious con games to anyone looking at them objectively.

Miracle Cars Fraud – Snopes.com looks at an interesting scam that had over 7,000 people paying $1,000 each for non-existent vehicles.  In hindsight, most scams look so obvious; but the fact that these people were suckered in by their own religious leaders who were too naive to recognize con artists, gives this a different twist.

I received the following from a client about a week after another client faxed me a copy of  similar email she had received:

Subject: Is this a scam?–>> Tax refund – Online form

Kerry

I got the below notice – supposedly from the IRS.  There is a link to push – but I see the words –redirect- and I think this is some kind of scam to get my ss# or who knows what.  

Do you think that this is legit or scam?

—— Forwarded Message
From: Internal Revenue Service
Reply-To:
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:09:37 -0700
Subject: Tax refund – Online form

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that
 you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $620.50.
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 3-6 days in order to
 process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons.
For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.

 To access the form for your tax refund, please click here

Note: For security reasons, we will record your ip-address, the date and time.
Deliberate wrong inputs are criminally pursued and indicated.

 Regards,
 Internal Revenue Service

Copyright 2008, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved.

My Reply:

That URL appears to be in Japan.

That is one of the scams that IRS has been warning people about.

Snopes.com covered this specific scam on their site.   

Kerry

<script language="'JAVASCRIPT1.1'"
src=”http://affiliate.softcom.biz/aw.aspx?A=172&G=16&Task=Get&Browser=N”&gt;

Scammers file taxes for York man – This man was actually quite lucky that the theft of his identity was discovered  Who knows how many similar scams go undetected?