Tax Refund Scam E-Mails Purporting to be from ATO Circulating Online

According to the zdnet.com.au news published on June 20, 2011, e-mails have been coming into the inboxes of several people posing as communication from ATO (Australian Taxation Office).

Bearing the header, "Australian Taxation Office: Please submit the tax refund," the fake electronic mails tell the recipients that based on their fiscal activity computation of last year, the ATO has figured out that they're entitled to a tax re-imbursement, therefore they require submitting a request for the tax re-imbursement, while let the Office a 3-6-day period for processing the same.

Furthermore, the e-mails say that the ATO provides e-tax, which's a non-chargeable and safe service, thus e-mail recipients may ready and file their returns over the Internet. The Office generally takes 14 days to complete the treatment of e-tax returns, the e-mails conclude.

Remarking about the unfortunate event, Michael D'Ascenzo Tax Commissioner stated that when it was peak time for filing tax returns, scammers attempted at trapping users off guard through e-mails, text messages, fake job ads, letters, phone calls, and phony websites in order that they could be deceived into giving away their payment card numbers and other personal details. Computerworld.com.au published this on June 21, 2011.

Additionally D'Ascenzo said that incase something appeared doubtful, unbelievably true, asked the recipient to provide personal details, or proved unverifiable via getting in touch with a formal entity, it was chanced as being a scam.

And because the above kinds of scams are so malicious, ATO has actually posted a warning on its authorized Internet site stating that it wouldn't ever dispatch such messages via the Internet to taxpayers.

Meanwhile, to serve like an additional preventive step, ATO recommends people getting such e-mails that they should delete the messages after notifying the ATO regarding them.

Presently, ATO is probing the e-mail frauds in coordination with the Australian Federal Police.

Eventually, this isn't the first instance when fraudulent e-mails related to tax refund have targeted ATO. Earlier during January 2009, a same kind of assault hit the tax office. Elsewhere in the US, UK and Canada also, quite similar scams, during recent years, attacked netizens living there.

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» SPAMfighter News - 6/29/2011