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Don’t succumb to ‘IRS agent’ scams, Boardman residents warn
BOARDMAN
No matter how persistent or threatening a scammer is in trying to extort money, don’t disclose personal information over the telephone and don’t succumb to the scheme, two township residents advise based on their experience with an IRS agent scam.
“Don’t give them any money,” warned Alice Petroff, whose residential landline telephone received eight calls, many of them after business hours, over three days last week from a man pretending to be an IRS agent, who tried to extort money from her.
“He said that he was an IRS agent and his name was Richard Brown” during the first call at 6:05 p.m. Tuesday, Petroff recalled.
The caller, who has a foreign accent, said she owed the IRS $975 due to a miscalculation on her 2011 federal income-tax return, and he did not specifically describe the nature of the “miscalculation,” Petroff added.
“I didn’t think it was real. I was a little angry,” Petroff said.
Petroff said she handed the phone to her son, Robert Davis, during the first call, and he spoke to the impostor during this call and subsequent calls.
During one of the calls, the caller said his supervisor had authorized him to reduce the demand to $475 by waiving penalties, Davis said.
The caller said the debt had to be paid immediately by going to a drugstore or high-volume discount retailer, obtaining a GreenDot Money Pak card, placing the required amount of cash on it, and reading to the caller the card’s 14-digit code number, so the money could be transferred.
The caller said Petroff had ignored a certified letter from the IRS demanding payment, so he would send deputy sheriffs to arrest her if the purported debt wasn’t immediately paid, Davis said.
“We knew this was all bogus when he started saying stuff like that,” Davis said.
Petroff said she had received no such letter.
“They would send you several letters and several warnings” if the demand was legitimate, Petroff said of the IRS.
The IRS never calls and demands immediate payment through untraceable prepaid cards, said Jennifer Jenkins, a Columbus-based IRS spokeswoman.
“Don’t verify anything, because if you are in trouble, you can go the next day and call the IRS yourself,” Davis said.
The IRS maintains an office at 10 E. Commerce St., Youngstown.
“I’m just going to get my number blocked because he’s not going to leave me alone,” Petroff said, adding that this was what Boardman police advised her to do.
Davis, who took extensive notes during the conversations with the impostor and had a friend record one of them, said he also has filed a formal complaint with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
The IRS scam, which Davis said he recognized almost immediately during the first call, is similar to at least eight other such IRS telephone-fraud cases reported to Boardman police in recent weeks.
In the recording of a 5:17 p.m. Wednesday call, which was played for a reporter, the caller identifies himself as “Officer Richard Brown,” gives a phone number with a 202 (Washington, D.C.) area code at which he can be reached, says the purported debt stemmed from a 2011 miscalculation and that it is to be paid using a GreenDot Money Pak card.
The caller said he was collecting under the authority of the “OOCR, Out of Court Restitution Act.”
In a 5:15 p.m. Thursday call, to which a reporter listened on a speaker phone, Davis asks the caller: “Are you really going to send the cops here?”
The caller replies: “Once the call gets disconnected, if the case does not get resolved, we have to do that,” and says he can grant no further extensions of time to pay.
In some of the IRS-scam calls, Davis said a noisy background, with multiple voices and phones ringing, convinced him the imposter was calling from a “boiler room” telemarketing center.
Other calls lacked that background noise, said Davis, who once was a telemarketing manager.
Davis, who called the impostor back and spoke to him once on the number the impostor provided, said he believes the number might belong to a disposable prepaid cellular phone and that he can’t determine the caller’s actual location.
“Now I’m scared. ... He might be local,” Davis said.
“I don’t know how much information they have. That’s another scary thing,” Davis concluded.