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Elderly Woman Loses $1,000 to Thief in IRS Phone Scam

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A 74-year-old woman who works in Darien got a phone call from a man pretending to be an IRS agent, and within hours $1,000 was taken from her. The case involves a common telephone scam in which the caller is told to immediately pay money through a wire transfer or gift card or some dire result will take place — in this case, that she would be arrested for lack of a tax payment claimed by the scammer. Elderly people tend to be victimized by the scam more than others. Darien police gave this account of the matter:

The woman, a New Haven resident who works at a house in Darien, had received a voice mail message about a month before from a “Paul Brown” who identified himself as an Internal Revenue Service official. He claimed in the voice mail that the victim owed the government money and he told her to call 509-592-9796.

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Darien Police Station

Phone Scammers Call the Wrong Guy

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Scammers may call anyone on the phone, and they particularly find retired people good targets to fool — but they wasted their time in this case. Darien Police Lt. Ron Bussell, commander of the Detective Division, has announced his retirement, but it hasn’t taken place yet. He’s scheduled to retire from the department at the end of the month. Bussell said he just recently happened to receive a call from a scammer who seemed to have a new wrinkle in an old kind of scam. The caller identified himself as being from the “Marshal Service” from somewhere in upstate New York.

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Darien Police Sign

Darien Woman Loses $2,400 to Phone Scammer Who Said She Owed IRS

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A man saying he was from the Internal Revenue Service called a 54-year-0ld Darien woman to demand thousands of dollars of what he said was her unpaid tax bill, and the scam worked — she lost $2,400. Darien police said the scam happened this way:

On July 5, the woman received a voicemail message from someone purporting to be “Peter Morris” from the IRS, asking her to call him back at (202) 657-4773. Police said that according to an Internet search, the name “Peter Morris” had been used in previous phone scams. The man had an accident from the Indian subcontinent, the woman later told police. She called back the number and “Peter Morris” told her she owed $2,359 in taxes, and she would either be arested or subject to a federal lawsuit if she didn’t pay it immediately. He stayed on the phone with her and told her not to hang up but to go to her bank, withdraw the money, then go to a Walmart store to send a Moneygram.