U.S. Treasury Agent Call Scams

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treasurydeptsealIn early November, 2014 TDS began to hear from people in Massachusetts that they were receiving phone calls from someone with a foreign accent named “Steve Martin” who claimed to be a U.S. Treasury Agent calling about back taxes and penalties.  The agent was threatening legal action unless the person agreed to immediately pay the back taxes over the phone.

We're certain the caller is not this Steve Martin.

We’re certain the caller is not this Steve Martin.

Soon after hearing about this scam, we got home and were thrilled to hear that we received the same scam!  And “Steve Martin” left us his message on our answering machine….twice!  Does he sound like a Treasury Agent to you? Click the audio file above and listen.

“…enforcement actions executed by you…”  What does this even mean?

The phone number he left for us to call is 510-355-8902.  We contemplated asking all of our friends to call him one evening one after the other expressing great concern about our tax situation but in the end we just laughed it away.  We looked up his phone number in Google and immediately found others reporting this scam:

http://whocalled.us/lookup/5103558902
http://www.callhunter.com/tags/theo-martin
http://mrnumber.com/1-510-355-8902

Even the IRS is reporting this scam on their website:
The IRSWarns of Pervasive Telephone Scam

Just hang up…After having a good laugh.

Click here to visit our more recent IRS Phone Scams!
Also click to read about tax scams during tax season!

Check out the scam call from the Cyber Crime Investigation Department!

UPDATED March 27, 2016: This App Blocks IRS Scam Calls From Reaching You [ABCNews.com, March 24, 2016]

UPDATE October 12, 2016: A reader contacted us saying she received a call from someone with a middle eastern accent claiming to be Steve Martin from the U.S. Treasury.  Call came from: 817-628-0874

UPDATE April 23, 2017: They’re back!  Doug at TDS got 2 of these calls just days apart saying that there is an arrest warrant out for “his address” due to tax issues and he had better call the number provided.  We hope you enjoy this as much as he did…