You check your cell phone caller ID and it shows you the name of your bank. “The employee expresses concern to make sure that the government’s stimulus funds reach you,” they need information and you of course provide it. After all, you’re glad they’re protecting you… or aren’t you?
…You’ve just been robbed
Beware of scammers
Swindlers are lurking, posing as bank employees and even as employees of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
There may be people who are waiting for the check and for some reason it hasn’t arrived yet, and you may get a call from a scammer who says, “Look, we have your financial impact payment ready to process, but we’re missing a few digits from your bank account or the last four of your four digits. Come again?”
4 Tips to Avoid Scams
According to the Federal Trade Commission, mail calls or e-mail fraud messages are becoming more and more elaborate and to avoid being scammed there are 4 tips to follow:
#1. Use only irs.gov/coronavirus. Use the internal revenue service and never in response to a text or email call for this.
#2. The IRS will not contact you by phone, email, text message or social networking with stimulus payment information or to ask for a social security number, bank account or government benefits debit card number. Anyone who does is a fraudster fishing for your information.
When the IRS tries to contact you about a problem, they will have a letter sent to your home or mail.
#You don’t have to pay to get the stimulus money.
#4. The IRS will not ask you to deposit your stimulus check and then ask you to pay it back because you were overpaid. That’s a fake check scam.
Much less is the IRS going to ask you for an immediate payment right away, or say you have to pay right now or you have to do it this way. The IRS doesn’t operate that way.
What Do I Do If I Get A Call?
If you receive this type of call the best thing you can do is to immediately hang up the phone and not engage in any type of communication with these scammers.
If the person is in doubt that they owe the IRS money or something, they can go to the website or call them directly.
If you get one of those automatic calls don’t touch any buttons, just hang up. If you think it’s a legitimate call from your bank but they’re asking for information, hang up politely and call the bank directly to confirm. Be very careful because con artists are getting more and more clever every day.