Treasury check scam happening now?

Mailed Treasury Check ^ | 24 January 2018 | Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Received a fake Treasury check in the mail today with no letter or anything to indicate as to why it was sent. Didn't put my name correctly per the government records (missed a little tidbit I won't mention here). When people cash these checks, the check is returned to whoever sent it per the routing info with your endorsement signature and your account number. Don't fall for it.

Micro printing on the endorsement line, but not on the edge of Liberty's garment. Biggest warning sign of all is that I haven't filed my taxes yet and have no reason to be getting a Treasury check. The Treasury verification web site is not working which is very strange. Watch out folks.

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Trying to help others avoid a scam.

[HopeSprings]

Thank you!!

[Pontiac]

When people cash these checks, the check is returned to whoever sent it per the routing info with your endorsement signature and your account number

This suggest that these are real checks.

If the banks process these checks it would seem that these scammers actually have money in a bank and their money is being used to cover these checks.

How are they managing to scam money if they are giving money away? Are these checks for only a few cents?

The majority of Americans do not have great quantities of cash sitting in their bank accounts for these people to loot.

There must be something to this scam I am missing.

[Louis Foxwell]

I have received several scam calls from IRS agents. I begin by telling the person calling to F*** themselves. Each time they have returned the greeting in kind and hung up.
Another scam that as been used on me twice is a call from a power company lineman with orders to cut my service. I have used a variation of my IRS greeting with good results. BTW my service was not disconnected.
These scams are always advanced by asking the victim to pay cash at a local wire service station (drug store, etc) to send money to an account number. Once it is gone it is gone forever.

sometimes with cop titles “detective”

[trebb]

Yep - I had some calls from “The IRS” and told them to send me the letter....also got a call from someone saying they were part of a pac fro Trump and wanting a donation - told them since they had my info, to email me and remind me because I never donated anything to someone who initiated and unsolicited phone call - I have the pac address bookmarked because I have donated to it so they have my email, but got no reminder...

[grobdriver]

Two years ago about this time of year we got a Tax Refund check in the mail for $8K

Like the OP we had not filed our return yet so this was odd.

We called and were informed that it was indeed a tax refund check, cut against a filed return (Identity theft).

I commented to the guy that it didn't do the thieves much good since the check came to me - he said often it goes to a different address (PO box) put on the return by the perps.

Upshot is, this was prolly a valid check from the government and the OP now gets to jump through the identity theft hoops, plus gets a special ID number from the IRS to validate future returns.

[ronniesgal]

i like your style! My guy was an obvious Mid Eastern type. I cannot tell you what i suggested he do to himself, his mother and his goat. No call backs either!
and the police never came to arrest me......

[yawningotter]

Green Dot cards are popular tools for scammers. They use the same “I’m from ____” routine and tell people to buy a $500 Green Dot card, then give them the number, or bad things will happen.

[redfreedom]

Go to one of those instant cash places that give payday loans. You’ll pay a huge percentage in their fees. Chances are you will not have to divulge anymore than your name to cash it. The scammers that sent it to you already have that. Keep the envelope it was sent in to prove it was mailed to you and you never created it.

I talked with my banker a few days back, she said there are so many ways scammers are passing bad checks they have a hard time keeping their tellers educated on it.

[tired&retired]

I was attending an IRS tax conference in Washington DC this past August when the Inspector General for Treasury was presenting on IRS fraud schemes currently going on.

First, he said that they had arrested many people at phone banks in India for making the calls. It was a large organised crime group. They are actively investigating the calls and prosecuting.

Second, he said that he even received the IRS Pay Up Now threatening phone calls at his private home phone!!!

These scammers have gone as far as having a second call to the scam target coming from someone claiming to be from the local police department who just received a call from an IRS Agent who was hung up on.

[tired&retired]

I was attending an IRS tax conference in Washington DC this past August when the Inspector General for Treasury was presenting on IRS fraud schemes currently going on.

First, he said that they had arrested many people at phone banks in India for making the calls. It was a large organised crime group. They are actively investigating the calls and prosecuting.

Second, he said that he even received the IRS Pay Up Now threatening phone calls at his private home phone!!!

These scammers have gone as far as having a second call to the scam target coming from someone claiming to be from the local police department who just received a call from an IRS Agent who was hung up on.

[KC Burke]

Attention everyone on this thread. I am with the MicroSofft On-Line Assistance Office and I need the following account information to correct problems with your computer. Please hold on while we verify your computer and banking information.

[jimbug]

Thanks FRiend. I posted this on my FB page. I took a look at the treasury site link in your post and that may be a scam as well.

The verification link might have been disabled by our own government (I hope).

Here is a different page from Treasury that has some subtle differences from the linky you provided: https://www.treasury.gov/services/Pages/Treasury-Payments.aspx

[LoveUSA]

When my mother moved in with me she closed an account held in her old bank. About 3 months later she got an envelope in the mail from California that was addressed in poorly written (as if by a child) scroll. It contained a printed check with my mother's name and old address as the account holder and was made out to an Hispanic name. It was marked insufficient funds. Clearly someone was trying to collect money that they were denied when the check did not clear. Mom then showed me statements she'd received from her closed account that listed about a dozen checks marked "denied due to lack of funds". The smallest check was $8,000 and the largest was $40,000.

I called the bank and they said don't worry, if there was no money in the account and no money paid out then she has nothing to worry about. The bank said people try to cash checks against closed accounts hoping to get cash from a teller before the system has time to recognize the error.

I complained that someone inside the bank had to be part of the scam and that it should be investigated. The bank said they didn't have a staff that did security and fraud investigations.

M&T.

[CrazyIvan]

I got a call from my “Local Sheriff’s Department” asking for a donation. I thanked them for the reminder and said I’d just hand it to the Sheriff next time I saw him at the pistol range and save postage. They hung up. I did a reverse look up on the phone # and it came up as an escort service in Chicago. I guess they’re diversifying.

[21twelve]

I bought a pricey piece of equipment off of Ebay years ago. Somebody saying he was a detective said that I had bought stolen property. “It was stolen from the lab at Stanford. It is such a specialized piece of equipment - anyone using that type of equipment would have known it was stolen.” (Hmmm - maybe? But I doubt it.)

“Okay - well, I didn’t. But of course I don’t want to be in trouble for receiving stolen property. You have my phone number somehow, so I’m guessing you must have my address too. Send me a letter on your police department stationary and notarized and I’ll have my lawyer look at it and proceed from there.”

I do wonder how they got my phone number off an ebay sale? Although I AM in a specialized field, and my ebay handle isn’t very cryptic - they could have done a search and found it.

15 years later and I STILL haven’t received that letter!

[Balding_Eagle]

So...................how is it that the escort service has your number?

Hehe.

[PAR35]

There is a related scam of the IRS sending real checks for a small amount so they can identify bank accounts to seize before they give notice of a tax problem they’ve created.

It may be used only against those who are visible Republicans. (The administration still hasn’t gotten around to cleaning up the IRS).

[left that other site]

Love your new tag line, Louis. :-)

(((Maybe it’s not new, but I just noticed it)))

[MD Expat in PA]

There is a job scam email that’s been long going around for some years. Since I was on Monster and LinkedIn while job searching, I get them all the time, and they usually go straight to the gmail spam folder, but my older brother almost fell for it some years ago.

There are several variations of it, some say it’s a work from home opportunity processing US shipments and or printing and mailing invoices for a European or Asian company and some say it’s for a “logistics manager” or for a “re-shipper”.

Here’s an example:

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/scam-alert-the-company-is-real-but-the-job-offer-is-fake-022015.html

But what they do is “hire” you after a couple of emails having been exchanged, but of course by now they have gotten your personal information by having you complete an application and W-4 such as your SSN, DOB, job and address history and banking information for direct depositing your pay.

But in this scam some will also often tell you that you have to purchase a specific type of printer and envelopes, mailing labels, boxes and other supplies, but say the will reimburse you upfront. So they send you a check, but a check for way more than their list of supplies actually costs. They then tell you to return to them, often via a money gram, the difference between the amount of the check they sent and what you actually spent and give you only a couple of days to make the purchases, send them the receipt and the money gram for the difference.

But the check is often drawn from a bogus account or from a foreign bank. The victim deposits the scammer’s check and draws funds from their own account for the difference before the victim’s bank figures out the deposited check is no good which can sometimes take a week or two.

The scammer now has the cash the victim sent via the money gram and also has the victim’s personal information that they can either sell to others or use themselves for identity theft.

FWIW my brother had prior experience working in a state agency’s print shop and for a printing company but after his wife company closed their office in MD and transferred her to their NJ location, my brother was out of work and posted his resume to several job search sites.

He called his daughter all excited to tell her about this great work from home job he had been offered but she was immediately suspicious that it sounded like a scam. But my brother didn’t believe her at first. So she called her brother and me and we all did research and we all called my brother telling him that it was a scam, I and his son both emailed him links to others who had been ripped off scammed by this very same scam and begged him not to give them any personal information or cash their check if sent to him.

My brother was a bit embarrassed at first but then thanked us and fortunately he hadn’t send them any personal information and when they sent him their bogus check, he took it to the local post office to the postal inspector. Not that anything may have resulted from that as these scammers are very slick and hard to track down.