Secondly, the IRS will never threaten to send you to jail for taxes you owe.Īnd, finally, the IRS will never request that you pay owed taxes with a gift card.
The IRS will always send a letter with a phone number for you to call. The giveaway here? First, the IRS will never call, text, or email you about unpaid taxes. The scammer then uses this information to purchase items online with the gift cards you bought. Once you purchase gift cards - the scammer will usually request gift cards from a specific retailer - you call back the criminal and read off your gift card numbers and PINs. The criminal says that you must pay the taxes you owe with a gift card. This scammer will say that you owe unpaid taxes and that the IRS will arrest you if you don’t pay now. In one of the more common gift card scams, a criminal will call you or send you a text or email message claiming to be working with the IRS. Here’s how to spot the scams and avoid them. Scammers might try to trick you by phone, text, or email with these seven common gift card scams. Once they have this information, they'll use it to buy whatever they want with the gift card, and victims will be out the money they spent on it. The scammers will then demand that victims purchase a gift card and either send them an electronic version of the card or provide them with the gift card's number and PIN. Scammers threaten to foreclose on these victims’ homes, send them to jail, or shut off their power if they don’t pay up. They might claim that victims haven't paid their taxes, are behind on their mortgage payments, owe hundreds of dollars in speeding tickets, or have fallen behind on their utility bills. The Federal Trade Commission says scammers will usually call, text, or email victims and tell them they are in some sort of financial trouble. The thieves behind these scams rely on high-pressure tactics to scare people into giving away gift cards.
Here's a look at some of the more common gift card scams and the steps you can take to avoid falling for them. They're examples of gift card fraud, a type of con in which criminals trick victims into either sending them online gift cards or reading the numbers on the back of a gift card over the phone.įortunately, spotting and avoiding different types of gift card scams isn't overly complicated. If you do get such calls, emails or texts, ignore them. Or maybe a state trooper calls to say that you owe hundreds of dollars in speeding tickets and that the only way to remove them from your record is by phoning in the numbers from an Amazon gift card to pay off your fines. Ever get a voice mail or text message from an IRS agent warning that you owe taxes and that the only way you can pay them is by sending the agency an electronic gift card?
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