Category Archives: irs

Scammers are blending W-2 phishing with wire fraud

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During last year’s run-up to the US Tax Day, scammers mercilessly targeted companies’ payroll and human resources professionals, tricking them into handing over employees’ W-2 forms. A W-2 form contains all the information criminals need to perpetrate tax refund fraud: the employee’s name, Social Security Number, address, and that year’s earnings information, as well as the employer’s name and address. This year, the scammers are at it again, but they’ve also decided to widen their … More → Continue reading Scammers are blending W-2 phishing with wire fraud→

IRS: Scam Blends CEO Fraud, W-2 Phishing

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Most regular readers here are familiar with CEO fraud — e-mail scams in which the attacker spoofs the boss and tricks an employee at the organization into wiring funds to the fraudster. Loyal readers also have heard an earful about W-2 phishing, in which crooks impersonate the boss and request a copy of all employee tax forms. According to a new “urgent alert” issued by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, scammers are now combining both schemes and targeting a far broader range of organizations than ever before. Continue reading IRS: Scam Blends CEO Fraud, W-2 Phishing→

Couple “driven by greed and a fast buck” jailed for $1.5m IRS scam

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They used the IRS’s ‘Get Transcript’ service to get personal information on people and use it to file bogus returns in their names. Continue reading Couple “driven by greed and a fast buck” jailed for $1.5m IRS scam→

IRS Re-Enables ‘Get Transcript’ Feature

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The Internal Revenue Service has re-enabled a service on its Web site that allows taxpayers to get a copy of their previous year’s tax transcript. The renewed effort to beef up taxpayer authentication methods at irs.gov comes more than a year after the agency disabled the transcript service because tax refund fraudsters were using it to steal sensitive data on consumers. Continue reading IRS Re-Enables ‘Get Transcript’ Feature→

Fraudsters Steal Tax, Salary Data From ADP

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Identity thieves stole tax and salary data from payroll giant ADP by registering accounts in the names of employees at more than a dozen customer firms, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. ADP says the incidents occurred because the victim companies all mistakenly published sensitive ADP account information online that made those firms easy targets for tax fraudsters. Continue reading Fraudsters Steal Tax, Salary Data From ADP→