Fraud Tip of the Day - April 3

Tax-Related Government Grant Telemarketing Scams

If you receive a call from someone claiming to be an IRS agent and they tell you that because of your good credit and timely filings of your tax returns you are eligible for a no-obligation government grant, hang up immediately! This is nothing more than a telemarketing scam in which scam artists pose as IRS agents to trick you into divulging the keys to your bank account so that they can empty it.

To many people, a call like this is music to their ears. Most of us are upstanding citizens that pay all of our taxes on time so what they're saying sounds perfectly reasonable. Before you give someone access to your bank account, however, there are a few things you should think about:

Have you ever heard of the IRS calling people to give government money away?
Is it ever a good idea to give someone access to your bank account
Does an unsolicited offer of free money make sense?

If you said yes to any of these questions you may be ripe for the picking. Once a criminal has access to your bank account there is no limit to how much they can withdraw. That means they will take every penny from your account.

If you sound skeptical but are still listening, they'll ask you to act fast because this is a limited time offer. Read that as, "We don't want you to have time to think about this." This scam is full of red flags. Any one of them should be enough to make you hang up the phone. You might be in desperate need of funds and this type of scam hits every year at a time when many Americans need the money. Don't fall into this trap. Just hang up on anyone asking for your bank account information.

See our Taxes section for more tax fraud information!

Read more about government grant telemarketing scams.