AUBURN — A local resident was bilked out of thousands of dollars by a phone scam, police said.
The victim told authorities that a male caller claiming to be an agent from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Department phoned several times. The caller claimed to be investigating an issue in which the victim owed taxes. The caller was “quite rude and intimidating,” according to a written release from police Deputy Chief Jason Moen.
The victim told police she hung up on the caller several times, then received two calls that appeared to originate from the Auburn Police Department’s main number, according to caller identification on her phone.
The victim also received at least one call that appeared to be coming from the Androscoggin County District Attorney’s Office main line.
Moen said the two official phone numbers were “spoofed” to mask the caller’s actual phone number. The victim said she found the scam to be more believable than others because of the numbers that appeared on her caller ID.
A “Lt. Green” threatened the victim with arrest by local police if she were to hang up on the so-called IRS agent. She was threatened repeatedly and was warned not to tell anyone about her “tax situation” or about payments she would be making to the IRS, according to Moen.
Moen wrote that anyone receiving similar phone calls is instructed to:
* Hang up and call the IRS at 1-800-829-1040, if you owe federal taxes, or think you might owe taxes. IRS workers can help you with your payment questions.
* Call and report the incident to Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 1-800-366-4484, if If you don’t owe taxes.
If anyone has fallen victim to this type of scam, the IRS has a website where victims of the “IRS Impersonation Scam” can make a report. The URL is www.treasury.gov/tigta/contact_report_scam.shtml.
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