IRS impersonators arrested

[SaraEA]

They got 'em!  Police in India arrested more than 70 people and more than 600 are being questioned and facing arrest.   Here is just one report:  http://abc27.com/2016/10/06/dozens-arrested-at-india-call-center-linked-to-irs-scam-calls/

Just today a client called and said the IRS has been calling her (she does have IRS issues), but she could hardly understand their thick accents in the message and every time she called back no one picked up.  Hopefully that indicates the authorities have shut off their phones and with everyone in jail there is no way they can answer anyhow.  I told her to read today's paper.

Of course, I'm sure there are many more scams like this one still operating.  And like with local drug gangs, when one gets taken out of commission others pop up to fill the void.  Well, at least we and our clients will have a reprieve.

[FDNY]

Great news.  I've been getting a lot of these lately where they come in a series of two calls.  One a man another a woman sounding a little robo like.  I love their closing, "have a nice day".  I hope they do too, making license plates and eating instant potatoes.

[JohnH]

I'm glad to see this, but I view the news with a mixture of positive and negative feelings.  It's probably more a matter of optics than substance.  The US government has probably been leaning on the Indian government to do something about this, since so many of the scammers have identifiable accents.  So the Indian government "locates" a site (which was probably already well-known to them), conducts a raid, does a few perp walks, and grabs some headlines.  Problem solved (at least the public relations part of it).

This operation is probably a drop in the bucket and nothing will really change with respect to the ongoing scams. But the government officials can claim they are cracking down and everybody feels better about it. 

[Max W]

This is very good news.  Based on the number of persons involved and the amount of money being  collected, this was a large scale operation.  Other operations that have been shut down involved a handful of people.  There are surely others still out there, but for the meantime, my "IRS" calls have stopped.

 

[jklcpa]

22 minutes ago, Max W said:

but for the meantime, my "IRS" calls have stopped.

Mine have stopped also.

[Terry D EA]

Thank you for this article. My calls have stopped as well. Glad they got these thugs.

[Catherine]

12 hours ago, Terry D said:

Glad they got these thugs.

At least this SET of thugs.  It's enough to make quite a dent.