Last Minute Tax Scam

Ohio Attor­ney Gen­eral Mike DeWine is warn­ing Ohioans to beware of threat­en­ing calls, in which the caller says they are from the IRS as the April 15 tax fil­ing dead­line approaches. In the past week along, the Ohio Attor­ney General’s Office has received more than 100 reports of IRS-related scams from con­sumers across the state. In a typ­i­cal IRS imposter scam, a con artist calls a con­sumer claim­ing to rep­re­sent the IRS. The caller said the con­sumer owes money for back taxes or is under inves­ti­ga­tion for tax fraud. The con­sumer is told to call a spe­cific phone num­ber imme­di­ately in order to avoid arrest or legal charges. Even­tu­ally the con­sumer is asked to send money using a pre­paid card or wire trans­fer to cor­rect the issue. Once the money is sent, it is nearly impos­si­ble to recover. Accord­ing to recent reports of this scam, con­sumers often receive a call from one out-of-state phone num­ber and are told to call a dif­fer­ent out-of-state num­ber, such as one with a 202 (Wash­ing­ton, D.C.) area code, a 360 (Wash­ing­ton state) area code or a 347 (New York) area code. To report a poten­tial scam or unfair busi­ness prac­tice, con­sumers should con­tact the Ohio Attor­ney General’s Office at 800–282-0515 or www.OhioAttorneyGeneral.gov.