Beware Of IRS Email Scam

A new email scam leads people to believe they are under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service.

Rick Brinkley, the President/CEO of the Better Business Bureau Serving Eastern Oklahoma, says the e-mail appears to come from the IRS Criminal Investigation division and claims that the recipient is under investigation for submitting a false tax return. The e-mail then says to click on a link or to open an attachment to find out the information that the IRS is going to use against them.

The IRS tells says the link/attachment is a Trojan Horse that can take over the person's computer hard drive and allows someone to have remote access to the computer.

The best advice is to never click on a link in an E-mail or open an attachment from someone you don't personally know.

Brinkley says the emails are being altered some to target businesses. They state that a customer has complained about the business and that the IRS can serve as an arbitrator to resolve the dispute. It then encourages the business owner to do the same thing as the other E-mail and requests the person to click on a link or open an attachment.

The IRS does not send out unsolicited e-mails or ask for detailed personal and financial information or asks people for PIN numbers, passwords or similar secret access information.

Brinkley says if you receive any E-mail that claims to be from the Internal Revenue Service, delete it or (without opening it) forward it to phishing@irs.gov.