IRS warns of new ‘scam mailing’ scheme to trick taxpayers with fake unclaimed refunds
The Internal Revenue Service warned that thieves are resorting to a new “scam mailing” scheme this tax season, swindling taxpayers into handing over their bank routing and social security numbers.
According to the IRS, the top scam targeting the approximately 162 million taxpayers in the US “tries to mislead people into believing they are owed a refund.”
Victims of the latest scheme will receive a cardboard envelope in the mail, with an enclosed letter boasting the seemingly-legitimate IRS masthead “with contact information and a phone number that do not belong to the IRS.”
The IRS has traditionally told Americans that the federal agency does not initiate contact with taxpayers via email, text messages or social media — noting on its website that these types of communications from the so-called IRS should be disregarded as fraudulent.
The IRS notoriously exclusively sends its communications via mail — though fraudsters have caught on and are now also delivering counterfeit requests for information to Americans’ mailboxes.
The letter will falsely claim that it is “in relation to your unclaimed refund,” the IRS warned, tricking people into divulging very personal detailed information — including photos of drivers’ licenses, bank routing numbers and social security numbers — which thieves will then use “to steal identities and money, including tax refunds,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a notice on the agency’s website.
The IRS said red flags to look out for include odd punctuation, a mixture of fonts and inaccuracies in tax deadlines, for example.
For reference, the majority of Americans must file their tax return for the 2023 fiscal year between Jan. 29 and April 15. Taxpayers in Maine and Massachusetts, however, have until April 17 because the states recognize the Patriot’s Day and Emancipation Day holidays.
Lisa Greene Lewis, a certified public accountant and tax expert with Turbo Tax, also told The Post that when filing tax returns online, filers should ensure that websites begin with “https” rather than “http,” as the former ensures the website is encrypted.
Encryption, which protects information by encoding it in a specific, hack-proof manner, is a roadblock for hackers.
“Another safeguard — use secure passwords when you set up any login and set up multi-factor authentication,” Greene Lewis said.
The X account Global News Report shared an example of a fraudulent email from the IRS, showing that a taxpayer was owed a $650 refund from the revenue service alongside a link to fill out a document — presumably with sensitive personal information — in order to receive the funds.
“We’re not even a third of the way into tax season and IRS spoofers are already at it,” Global News Report said in an X post last week.
On top of this new “scam mailing” scheme, the IRS has a Dirty Dozen list, which it publishes each year of the top scams and schemes “intended to alert taxpayers and the tax professional community,” per the IRS.
Topping 2023’s Dirty Dozen list is fraudulent yet “aggressive pitches from scammers who promote large refunds related to the Employee Retention Credit (ERC).”
Promoters have even been known to blast ads on radio and the internet touting that Americans could be eligible for an ERC refund, which was available to certain employers, primarily during the COVID-19 pandemic as an incentive for employers to keep staffers on payroll.
Other Dirty Dozen scams include phishing and smishing, which are fake communications from thieves posing as the IRS in an effort to solicit Americans’ personal information, ultimately leading to identity theft.
In the 12 months leading up to September 2023, the IRS’s federal investigators reportedly launched 1,409 tax-crime probes and found $5.5 billion in tax fraud for the period.
Frenchman Ayodele Arasokun, 46, was sentenced to 34 years in federal prison in September for coordinating a scheme to file more than 1,700 false returns, which would have minted him a staggering $9.1 million in refunds from the IRS, according to a press release shared by a West Virginia US Attorney’s Office at the time.
A total of $2.2 million in fraudulent refunds were actually paid to Arasokun by the IRS at the time of his arrest, the notice said.
