Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/20/an-irs-scammer-called-me-and-i.html
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15 Likes
“That’s nothing.”
Busted up at that point.
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I’m sure you got some good giggles this morning, but you’re in for a good 1000 more spam calls. :-0
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Hell yeah, that sounds awesome. You sue me, and offer me a free helo ride? Sign me up!
20 Likes
Those guys are fun to f*** with. The IRS seems to all but encourage it, frankly, with their absolute hard line that “the IRS never calls.”
And it’s weird, the one time I did get into a bit of a dispute with the IRS over something – a few thousand bucks – they were the most courteous, professional government folks I ever worked with. They wouldn’t budge on the issue, but they never raised their voice or treated me with anything but respect, and gave a fair amount of runway to try to get things settled up.
32 Likes
A real IRS agent would’ve insisted you buy him/her lunch.
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When you really piss them off, they start spoofing your telephone number.
My land line number that gets maybe 4 calls a week and rarely any voice mail received over a thousand calls and 300+ voice mails from a Friday to a Monday when I had my number changed.
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Did you cause that music to play, Mark? And what happened after the end of the recording?
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I will pay up to $15 for an app that will interrupt with that music anytime the conversation drags.
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($8,900) was too little for me to bother with
Hell, that’s Mark’s weekly budget for kitchen gadgets.
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“Sir, are you a dumbass?”
“Well, I’m not the one who’s using an Indian call center to try and claim it’s working for the United States’ IRS.”
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Nice Gravity’s Rainbow reference, Mark. I was tempted to call these jokers Yesterday when I got their Robocall.
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Shit. Glad I just let them ring to VM, then check the number on the webtubz, then block em.
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Wait…do we all have Tyrone’s cell phone number now?
(Plus, that address is near a GAME DUDE!)
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I’m not sure if the tactic has fallen out of fashion or if it’s just random chance, but in 2014, my Asterisk system logged 49 calls from spoofed numbers that were two digits off from mine (most of them blocked from ringing my phone). Thirty-eight of them came from one specific number from late May to early July, and whoever was doing the spoofing once tried the “out of area” trick, only to be greeted by Asterisk’s privacy manager (which prompts the caller to key in his/her phone number). The scammer keyed in that same spoofed number.
Lately, they seem to have cottoned on number blocking, and randomly spoof a vast variety of numbers. They never seem to leave messages on voice mail. I’ve also been getting a lot of “out of area” calls lately, but they never key anything in.
I think it’s time for me to change my setup, so that unknown numbers get a CAPTCHA and only whitelisted numbers ring through to the phone. That, and port out the number to a cheap VoIP provider and ditch the landline for good. It’s just not worth the cost anymore.
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The real IRS sent me a bill for $13k once. In true bureaucratic fashion, increasing amounts of paperwork were exchanged until they decided I didn’t owe them anything.
Not one phonecall.
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I’ll have to listen to this later but I wonder if this is the same guy who called me saying he was from Microsoft. I asked for his IP address and told him to tell me what mine was or what my computer name was and what version of Windows I was running. He got more and more upset with all the questions and eventually yelled fuck you and hung up. Usually they just hang up when I start asking questions. Maybe he just had a bad day
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Know what’s great about paper vs phone calls?
Paper leaves a trail. There’s a clear record of what did and did not happen. Very little room for misunderstanding.
As big a pain in the ass as it can be, it’s the safest method.
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Au Contraire, every iteration with the IRS, I took great delight in including copies of the entire previous correspondences (including the cover letters).
Was quite a stack by the time I was done. Was determined to annoy them. I hope my file folder is huge now in their archives.
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