Apparently, scammers hope that taxpayers have a short memory.
The EFTPS scam that was making the rounds last fall is gaining steam again. This time, the email has been tweaked a little bit to make it look more authentic. The email reads like this:
Your Tax payment (ID: 30749894123088), recently from your checking account was canceled by the The Electronic Federal Tax Payment System.
Rejected Tax transferTax Transaction ID: 30749894123088
Reason for rejection See details in the report below
FederalTax Transaction Report tax_report_30749894123088.pdf.exe (self-extracting archive, Adobe PDF)
Internal Revenue Service, Metro Plex 1, 8401 Corporate Drive, Suite 300, Landover, MD 20785
I received three of these emails just on yesterday with subject headings claiming “Federal Tax transaction canceled”, “Federal Tax transfer rejected” and “Rejected Federal Tax payment.”
The source of the email, however, varies from a Russian, Ukraine and Dutch email accounts, not the IRS, despite the address claiming to be from “irs.gov.”
The email contains a link which will, it claim, download as a pdf.
This is a scam. Do not click on the link. You can simply delete the email of you can send it to phishing@irs.gov for investigation.
The link likely contains a virus that could infects your computer or direct you to a bogus form or site posing as a genuine IRS form or Web site in order to steal your identity or otherwise access your financial information. A nearly identical scam which was targeting small business accounts last year was linked to the Zeus family. The link actually did take you to the IRS web site but along the way, a version of Zeus (a trojan horse) was installed on your computer in order to intercept your online banking transaction data.
The most current scam appears to target personal tax accounts. The purpose is likely similar: to obtain personal and financial information used by the scammers to commit identity theft. That information can be used to empty bank accounts, run up charges on the credit cards, apply for loans and file fraudulent tax returns in the name of the taxpayer seeking a refund.
The IRS maintains a list of schemes, including phishing efforts tied to the Making Work Pay Credit, on its web site.
Remember that the IRS will never send an unsolicited e-mail about your tax account or tax matters. If you have questions about your tax account, do not reply to an unsolicited e-mail. Rather, contact your tax professional or call the IRS directly at 1.800.829.1040.
