IRS Alerts Business Owners to Fraudulent e-Mail Scams

MASTERING MANAGEMENTIRS Alerts Business Owners to Fraudulent e-Mail ScamsWASHINGTON (August 19, 2007) - The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued an alert warning taxpayers of the latest versions of an e-mail scam intended to fool people into believing they are under investigation by the agency's Criminal Investigation division. The latest versions appear aimed at business taxpayers as well as individual taxpayers. Targets are sent an e-mail purporting to be from IRS Criminal Investigation that falsely states that the person is under a criminal probe for submitting a false tax return to the California Franchise Tax Board. The e-mail seeks to entice people to click on a link or open an attachment to learn more information about the complaint against them. The attachment is a Trojan horse that can take over the person's computer hard drive and allow someone to have remote access to the computer. The IRS urges people not to click the link in the e-mail or open the attachment. Recipients of questionable e-mails claiming to come from the IRS should not open any attachments or click on any links contained in the e-mails. Instead, they should forward the e-mails to [email protected] and follow the instructions online at www.irs.gov.  "Everyone should beware of these scam artists," says Kevin M. Brown, Acting IRS Commissioner. "Always exercise caution when you receive unsolicited e-mails or e-mails from senders you don't know." Brown stresses that the IRS does not send out unsolicited e-mails or ask for detailed personal and financial information. Additionally, the IRS never asks people for the PIN numbers, passwords or similar secret access information for their credit cards, banks or other financial accounts.(Source: IRS)