IR-2014-92: IRS Warns Financial Institutions of Scams Designed to Steal FATCA-Related Account Data
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sent this bulletin at 09/24/2014 10:11 AM EDT
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Issue Number: IR-2014-92Inside This IssueIRS Warns Financial Institutions of Scams Designed to Steal FATCA-Related Account Data WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today issued a fraud alert for international financial institutions complying with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Scam artists posing as the IRS have fraudulently solicited financial institutions seeking account holder identity and financial account information. The IRS does not require financial institutions to provide specific account holder identity information or financial account information over the phone or by fax or email. Further, the IRS does not solicit FATCA registration passwords or similar confidential account access information. “Tax scams using the IRS name can take many forms and they are not limited by national borders,” said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. “People should always be cautious before sending sensitive information to anyone.” Financial institutions directly registered to comply with FATCA and those in jurisdictions that are treated as having in effect intergovernmental agreements (IGAs) to implement FATCA through intergovernmental cooperation have been approached by persons representing themselves as the IRS. The IRS has reports of incidents from multiple countries and continents. These fraudulent solicitations are known as “phishing” scams. These types of scams are typically carried out through the use of unsolicited emails and/or websites that pose as legitimate contacts in order to deceptively obtain personal or financial information. More information on prior alerts and scams can be found on IRS.gov. Thank you for subscribing to the IRS Newswire, an IRS e-mail service. If you know someone who might want to subscribe to this mailing list, please forward this message to them so they can subscribe. This message was distributed automatically from the mailing list IRS Newswire. Please Do Not Reply To This Message. |