Phony “IRS Tax Refund” Email Scam
Don’t fall for this one: identity thieves are pretending to offer IRS tax refunds in fake email scams. Phony refund “phishing” scams use the Internal Revenue Service name to try to get your personal identity and financial information, so the crooks can steal from you.
Here’s how it works. You receive an unsolicited email. It claims to be an official IRS notification that you are eligible to receive a tax refund, often for an amount such as $571.94. Bogus emails may come from plausible-looking addresses such as "tax-refunds@irs.gov" or "admin@irs.gov".
You are then asked to copy and paste a URL website address into your browser to make your refund claim, or click on a link. The trick is that the web address looks like it might be a legitimate government website, but instead, you are bounced to a scammer’s look-alike website. That site then asks you to submit information, such as your Social Security number and a credit card number, to make your tax refund claim or reply to a bogus IRS request. According to the IRS, there are websites in at least 20 different countries hosting multiple variations of this popular identity theft scheme.
Quick Tip-Offs to the Scam:
- The IRS does not use email for correspondence with taxpayers about refunds.
- The IRS reports that it does not ask for personal identity or financial information by unsolicited email.
Other Versions of This Scam:
- A brand-new version of this scam pretends to be a solicitation from the IRS and the US Government to help victims of the California wildfires. This is an entirely bogus “phishing” scheme which uses a link to a fake IRS website page, along with text from an actual California Assembly speech about the wildfires. Don’t fall for it!
- Current scam emails may claim that you can get $80 by filling out a customer satisfaction survey for the IRS. The survey asks for personal identity and financial information, among other things.
- Scare versions of the scam ask the recipient to respond to an IRS “investigation” about some kind of tax fraud that he or she supposedly committed. The victim is asked to click on a link to learn more. This may download a “Trojan Horse” virus, allowing a stranger to gain remote access to your computer.
- In another twist, the email falsely warns the recipient that someone else has tried to pay their income taxes by stealing the victim’s financial identity and using the victim’s money. The victim is asked to confirm his or her financial identity in order to avoid having this happen.
- Non-residents have received bogus letters and phony versions of an actual IRS form (Form W-8BEN, which establishes tax withholding for foreign individuals). In this case, the victims are asked to provide private information such as mother’s maiden name, passport number, banking PINs, etc. The legitimate IRS Form W-8BEN does not request such information.
- Still other versions of this scam falsely claim that a complaint has been filed against a business, and suggest that the IRS can act as an arbitrator.
What to Do:
- If you want to check whether the IRS is actually trying to contact you about a tax refund, call the IRS at 1-800-829-1040.
- Do not click on any links or attachments that may have come with the phony IRS email.
- Of course, do not provide any personal identity or financial information in response to emails that pretend to come from the IRS.
- To see instructions about how to send the IRS a bogus email that you have received, through its special mailbox at phishing@irs.gov, click here.
For additional information from the IRS about these types of scams, click here.