A Trip to the Phishing Hole

In an age where phishing scams are mostly weird texts saying “hi” or asking me if I’m free for golf (and inexplicably calling me Sheila), it felt downright quaint to get targeted the old-fashioned way this month, with robo-callers and automated voicemails. Actually, it felt like Christmas because going down weird Internet rabbit holes to investigate these things is a personal pleasure. And since it was finance-adjacent and something you may encounter, you should know about it.

Unlike with most scam calls, my phone doesn’t flag this one as spam. The caller spoofs the numbers of local medical facilities, accountants and lawyers. But the voicemail is always the same. “Good morning. This is ________ with the Tax Resolution Group, LLC. It’s uh (day and date) and I’m calling given it looks like you may have outstanding taxes on your record. Our company specializes in helping individuals enroll in the new zero taxation program, which can make any old amounts non-billable. Please give us a call back at XXX-XXX-XXXX so we can get this handled. Again, my number is XXX-XXX-XXX. If you’d like to opt out because you already paid this, you can call back the caller ID and press 8. Thank you.”

Sometimes the company name changes to Tax Resolution Center, sometimes Tax Resolution Foundation. Sometimes the messages are 34 seconds long, sometimes 35, sometimes 37. Sometimes the voice is male, sometimes female. Sometimes the voice calls itself Robin, other times Lisa, Joanna or any other popular 20^th century baby name. Its accent is always blankly American, no regional twang. It always pauses in odd places, as if the computer-generated voice couldn’t quite catch up with the script. It always tries to sound calm and professional. But since Robin, Lisa and Joanna all speak with the same emotionless inflection and cadence, it gets trapped in the auditory uncanny valley.

Anyway, because hemming skirts by hand gets tedious and the baseball playoffs let me down by forcing me to hate-watch a Padres/Dodgers barroom brawl instead of quality baseball with likeable teams, and because this smelled like a scam, I did some googling one evening last week. It had all the phishing scheme hallmarks, above and beyond the weird computer voice. It didn’t address me by name. It tried to scare me. It tried to create a sense of urgency. It accused me of unpaid tax bills I know don’t exist. And while the IRS does have a program whereby it will compromise on back taxes with people who don’t have the means to pay in full, it would never be called Zero Taxation Program, and it would not make “any old amounts” go away. The government will always extract every last penny it can.

On all fronts, their goal was to get me to shut off critical thinking, panic and call a phone number. The scammers use taxes as a further source of fear. Maybe my identity has been stolen! Maybe I screwed up in April! If they are successful, my heart rate quickens, my brain enters fight-or-flight mode, and with my hand shaking from the adrenaline rush, I will call back.

Understanding this ploy is your first line of defense. When a call, voicemail, email, whatever gets your heart racing, STOP. Breathe. Take down the company’s name and look it up. If it is legit, which it probably won’t be since legit businesses don’t use fear like this, the Internet will tell you. If it is a scam, which it probably will be, the Internet will tell you. If it is a scam using a real business’s name, the Internet will tell you.

Googling “Tax Resolution Group scam” revealed a wealth of information, which kindly spared me from having to call these clowns back to figure out their game. Turns out that while this scam is new to me, it has percolated for at least a year. Here is how they operate.

1. If I called back, they would ask for all my personal information to verify my identity. Name, birthday, address, Social Security Number, employer—everything someone could use to steal my identity.
2. The scammers would use my info to fabricate records showing I most definitely owe Uncle Sam a lot of money and am probably destined for debtor’s prison after my assets are seized.
3. They would then try to sell me their magical service that will make this all go away, like a big friendly Easy button of financial freedom
4. After agreeing to this Zero Taxation Program, they would say great, let us get that taken care of, by the way, first you need to pay fees, lots of fees, and the amount would probably grow the longer I hem and haw.
5. If I said yes, I remember what happened to Nicolas Cage and Wesley Snipes and several hundred/thousand dollars is totally worth it to get the IRS off my back, they will tell me how to pay with gift cards, wire transfers, cryptocurrency or pre-paid debit cards.
6. If I paid, they would go poof, and I would not be enrolled in a tax relief program. I would just be poorer.

Now, the tricky thing here is that there is an actual, real business called Tax Resolution Center, LLC. It is a small tax representation business in San Jose, CA, with a real address and phone number and people who work there. Sometimes scammers do this, using a real business’s name. I used to get a lot of calls from scammers masquerading as The Feed Foundation, which happens to be a real charity.

Thankfully, there are a couple of easy ways to sift the wheat from the chaff. One, add the word “scam” to the search terms when you look up the company. Two, if you find the real company’s website, you can look at their contact information and quickly see the phone number on their website doesn’t match the phone number the scammers provided.

Either way, the critical thing to remember is to slow down and engage your brain. Have a glass of water and breathe evenly until your brain is out of fight-or-flight mode. After all, if you really do have a tax problem, waiting five minutes won’t change things for the worse.

And if you do end up in a conversation with scammers, know the red flags to listen out for. Asking for your personal information is a big one. Do not give your Social Security number or other personal information to anyone who calls you. Your bank will not call you and ask for that. Nor will the IRS. Only crooks will do this.

Requesting payment by gift card, debit card, cryptocurrency or wire transfer is the other biggie. Again, legitimate businesses and government agencies won’t do this. Here, too, only crooks will, because these payments are irreversible and, in some cases, untraceable. 

I wish this were my final phishing-awareness piece ever. But alas, there will be new ones, because these jerks never stop. And it isn’t just phone scams! A quick look through my spam folder showed me that I have been “haked,” that my Social Security Number has been deactivated over “questionable practices,” and that dating services I have never signed up for have matched me (probably to a fellow who hopes to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from me while he is lonely and working at sea on an oil rig). It is a mean, messy, scammy world out there, full of rotten scoundrels who want to steal our hard-earned money.

We would rather you keep your hard-earned money (and invest it!), so rest assured. As and when new scams hit the radar, we will do our best to continue demystifying them for you. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.