BY FAHMIDA Y. RASHID
What’s the scariest thing that happened to me on Halloween this year? It was a phone call. According to the caller ID, it came from a local number. When we answered, a male voice identified himself as calling from the “Kings County Sheriff’s Office” and asked for a member of my family. When we explained that she wasn’t available, we were told that there was an outstanding warrant out for her. We were also told she was going to be arrested in the next 45 minutes, because of outstanding federal taxes from 2010.
We are always willing to cooperate, within reason, so we asked for more information. After giving us a phone number and the name of the person we should speak with at the federal government office, the caller transferred us to that number. The agent who answered the phone claimed that if we wanted to resolve this right away, we would have to provide a cell phone number. The person wasn’t very pleased when we refused, and kept repeating that our lack of cooperation meant that this family member would be arrested in 45 minutes. Scary? A little bit.
RED FLAGS APLENTY
There were lots of ways to tell right away that this call was a scam.
1. New York City residents know that we don’t have a “Kings County Sheriffs Office.” We have the NYPD. We do actually have a Sheriff’s Office, though, and it does handle tax evasion issues, but as the friendly spokesperson at the Sheriff’s Office told me when I asked, the office handles only cases for local taxes.
2. The caller kept saying
“federal government”—not the IRS. Not the Internal Revenue Service.
3. Law enforcement doesn’t call and say, “Pay up or we will arrest you.” If there’s a warrant, the arrest happens first and there’s an opportunity to fix it. Usually with a judge.
4. The demand that we “act in 45 minutes” was clearly a social-engineering tactic to create a high-pressure situation, said White Hat Security’s Robert Hansen.
5. I didn’t mention this in my initial summary, but we were told we were going to be transferred to speak with “Michael Black.” Yet when he answered, he said, “This is Khan.” If you are going to run a scam operation, get your names straight.
