A scam that threatens recipients with a lawsuit for tax evasion has hit the Illawarra.
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Residents in the region have received calls from the scammers, claiming to be from the Australian Tax Office.
Initially the scammer doesn’t speak to the victim directly but rather leaves a voicemail message.
The exact wording of the message varies but in one example supplied by the real Australian Tax Office, the voicemail warns that legal action against the victim for tax evasion is about to commence.
“So before the things go wrong against you or before the police officer from the local police department will approach you and issue a warrant for your arrest, kindly call us back on our call-back number,” the message states.
It could come from a real person or be a robo-call.
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As in most phone scams, if the victim calls back they are persuaded to hand over money, iTunes cards or even pay in Bitcoin.
Australian Tax Office Assistant Commissioner Kath Anderson said phone calls demanding payment of a fake tax debt was the most common type of scam reported to the ATO.
Sadly, plenty of people do fall for these scams; in 2017-18 Ms Anderson said almost $950,000 was paid out to scammers claiming to be from the ATO.
“Scammers are busy all year round, but we always see an increase in activity at tax time because scammers know tax time is when many Australians are expecting to have contact with the ATO, so there’s a pretty big pool of potential victims,” Ms Anderson said.
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She said the ATO did communicate via email, SMS and phone calls but there were ways to tell when it is a scammer on the other end.
She said the ATO would never “threaten or abuse” someone, nor would they ask for a pre-payment to have a tax refund released.
“We wouldn’t ask you to pay a debt using iTunes cards, prepaid visa or cryptocurrency and we won’t ask you to make a payment into an account with a BSB that isn’t either 092-009 or 093-003,” Ms Anderson said.
If people were unsure contact was genuine, they should not agree to take any action.
Instead, they should contact the ATO on 1800 008 540.