A Phishing Scam Perpetrates in Exploiting IRS Name

Fraudsters are using more innovative methods to trick people into parting with their personal information leading to theft of their money, said the head of the Council of Better Business Bureau, as reported by The Birmingham News on June 15, 2007.

During the first week of June 2007, the Internal Revenue Service warned that someone was attempting to purport the agency online and apply scary tricks in e-mail to corrupt the users' PC. The e-mail would say that the tax agency's criminal specialists were investigating the recipient who could know more about it by clicking on a given link.

Steve Cole, president and chief executive officer of BBB based in Arlington, Va., and the person supervising 128 agencies in North America said a similar phishing scam in 2006 embedded the look-alike BBB logo in e-mail message that tried to conduct ID fraud. Cole said the new scam moved along from purporting the BBB's good name and trust to exploiting the name of IRS. He was answering an interview just before giving a luncheon address at the annual meeting of BBB of Central Alabama at Harbert Center on June 14.

Fraud continues to be a scary issue but much has been done to circumvent it in the past few years, Cole said. The general public now knows various simple measures to safeguard their privacy and businesses are adopting better ways to stop fraud, as per the news reported by The Birmingham News on June 15, 2007.

According to Christopher Miller, a spokesman for IRS, a malicious e-mail using the agency's name was in circulation. Miller said the scam attempts to dupe people and falsely convince them that the IRS Criminal Investigation Division was probing them. The e-mail tells the recipient that he/she is subject to a criminal investigation for filing an ingenious tax return. It also has a link, which claims to provide more information. Radiolowa published this in news on June 11, 2007.

But the IRS cautions people to ignore the link, for the attachment is a malicious Trojan program that could allow some fraudster gain remote access, said Miller in news published by Radiolowa on June 11, 2007.

Related article: A New "Blackmailing" Variant Creeps Around…

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