Posted on 09/21/2019 2:06:01 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Two Los Angeles County women believed to be part of a national fraud ring were arrested on suspicion of posing as employees from the Internal Revenue Service in a phone scam that may have bilked several victims out of $900,000, the Fontana Police Department said Friday.
A Fontana man received a call on Sept. 4, 2019, from a person who identified themself as an IRS employee and threatened to arrest the victim if he didn’t pay the caller $2,200 in Target gift cards, police said. The victim complied and provided the gift cards to the caller.
He later reported the incident to Fontana police, and detectives traced the gift cards to a Target store in the Los Angeles area, where they found surveillance footage of a woman redeeming them, according to the department.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
“Who identified themself”. English, please.
Don’t fall for this!!!!
The IRS only takes Walmart gift cards!!!
Good. I am glad they investigate these scams and get the culprits. Lock them up for a very long time to discourage others.
Exactly.
My Aunt got nailed by someone in LA doing this.
I estimate fully 90% of calls that are placed to my phone are from telemarketing and scams. And I have NoMoRobo and an additional call screening blocker on my line. This nonsense has gotten out of control.
Immigration status?
Reason #216 to not answer the phone unless you know who’s calling.
I get a call like this twice a week on average!!!
Released on bail = last time you will ever see them
The criminals are wining kinda like the cops are not trying. Credit card services have been calling for about 2 decades.
It appears their ancestors came over on mayfrower.
Ideally everybody would answer and press the button needed to get a human, otherwise they will only waste their time on people more likely to get scammed. I’d rather they waste time answering for perhaps 800 out of a 1000 dead ends to get to that 1 or 2 people who will fall for it than only have to answer it 1 or 2 times. I typically push the button and put them on mute - it takes about the same time as I would spend cleaning out the voicemail they leave.
They called me and tried to claim I owed back taxes on the money I got from a Nigerian Prince I met over the internet.
Ditto!
The real headline “Dumbasses get scammed thinking the IRS accepts payments in Target gift cards! Still hope for Nigerian Millionare Princes!”
As I get older my tolerance level suffers. I want to see these criminals who bilk dumb people executed publicly by firing squad.
These scams can be immediately shutdown since the Secret Services uses phony credit cards to see where those cards and ran from.
My point is the federal government has no interest in protecting the citizens of this country.
This must be a HUGE problem. My local Home Depot pulled all their prepaid visa and mastercard and put up a sign
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