Five IRS scammers arrested...

[mjr]

It's a start. I hope they drop the hammer on them.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/...qXT?li=BBnb7Kz

[HYHYBT]

Wow, people are stupid. On both sides: it makes sense that fear would cut off reasoning for the victims, but the crooks should know better than to tick off the IRS too.

[mjr]

Wow, people are stupid. On both sides: it makes sense that fear would cut off reasoning for the victims, but the crooks should know better than to tick off the IRS too.

True.

You know, it surprised me when I read the article. The majority of the IRS scammers that I have heard of are from India or Pakistan, or some place like that. The people that got arrested were Cubans in Florida.

I'm surprised that Interpol can't go after the others. Unless they're harder to trace, spoofed numbers and whatnot.

[s_stabeler]

Wow, people are stupid. On both sides: it makes sense that fear would cut off reasoning for the victims, but the crooks should know better than to tick off the IRS too.

exactly. don't they remember that it was the IRS that managed to be stubborn enough to get enough evidence to take down Al Capone?

Also, if nothing else, most crimes are prosecuted at the state level. pretend to be an agent of the federal government to scam people, and you get to enjoy the federal justice system. where there is no parole.

[mjr]

Some of this, though, I think is because people just don't know. Even with the dearth of information available about scams like these, many people still don't know that the IRS won't call you for something like taxes. They send letters.

[MadMike]

I think fear of the IRS has a lot to do with it, although the attempts I've received have all been pretty pathetic. The one message I got sounded like some crappy text-to-speech program. The other was so garbled I could barely make it out at all.

At least the first one was smart enough to spoof "Washington DC" on the Caller ID.