When the scammer in question phoned Officer Roder in Eau Claire, Wi. he made a huge mistake. Roder received what was allegedly an urgent phone call from the IRS. In the message, the “IRS” told him he would be arrested if he didn’t call back. So Roder did just that. Roder works for the Eau Claire Police Department and is aware of the many scams being tried out on citizens, usually by someone in a foreign country and almost always with a foreign accent. He decided that in this case he was going to phone the IRS scammer back.
When Roder gets through to the caller, he is first asked for his case number, which of course, he doesn’t have.
The scammer then tells Roder to give him his address, saying with that information he will be able to track down the case number. Roder naturally finds this amusing, as he questions the caller saying, how can they arrest him if they don’t know where he is? This stymies the so-called IRS agent who briefly goes silent.
Police officer asks how long he has before he is arrested by the IRS
Roder goes on to ask the IRS scammer how long it is before he will be arrested and the scammer responds that Roder has until the end of his (the scammer’s) shift. After that local sheriff’s deputies would be handling the matter and making the arrest. They then try to establish when the end of the scammer’s shift would actually be.
The story gets complicated when Roder wants to phone the IRS and the scammer tells him they no longer have his file as it has been handed over to them for collection. From then on, the scammer is possibly getting nervous and starts making mistakes. For instance, when Roder asks for the “IRS agent’s” name on two occasions, he gives two different responses.
First he is Maxwell, then he is Dave Johnson – when the officer queries the difference in the name, the scammer suddenly changes it to Dave Maxwell Johnson.
Is this an IRS scam?
Roder goes on to ask how he can tell this is not a scam, as he has heard the IRS would never make phone calls, but would rather send letters. The scammer gets flustered and starts saying that in emergency cases they sometimes have to phone.
At that point in the video Detective Don Henning of The Eau Claire Police Department comes on to advise the public that they never receive information from the IRS or warrants to arrest citizens based on this kind of phone call, adding that this was truly a scam. According to the police department, they posted the video to their Facebook page to remind people to always be aware of scams, just like this one. As noted by NBC News, the police department’s copy of the video is currently going viral with over 4 million views. Readers can enjoy a YouTube version of the video below.
