Yes, I have and for the exact same refund. I certainly hope people don't fall for this, but I fear some will, especially the elderly and kids. Yikes.

The IRS has plainly said they will ONLY send Hard Copied to you, NOT email.

So when we get the cash can we go out for a big dinner on the IRS?:)

I`ve seen this as well... Bad news, I pray the Gov`t locks them up!

Well guys...just make sure if you read it...have a few cuos of java just in case you might fall for it.

TimeWarner ( yea right) is sending me the same stuff- "they transferred servers "in Sept. and lost my information. If I dont fill out the necessary ( ss#,banking etc) I will lose my account. Now tell me how did they find me to email me if I was "lost". Scams are popping up their ugly heads all over and I am like Missy, there will be many that fall for it becase they think they are real. Scum bags.

I haven't received this one yet, but thanks for the heads up.

Michele,

You can report it to phishing@irs.gov

Danielle,

Check it out and read the main home page.

Neal, thanks for passing this along. I have not seen it yet...but now that I've sent this blog, I'll probably be intercepted on the web and start getting all kinds of scams...seriously, thanks for the warning

Al,

I just do not want anyone else to fall for this and the blood suckers out there who take advantage.

Thanks! I got this email and knew it was bad bad bad news!  THanks for redirecting me to what I can do with them from now on!

Renee,

I hope you read through the real info they give you...pretty stupid that all you have to do is click home and it takes you to their real site.

The IRS is more careful about its grammar in their publications and written communications.  This one has scam written all over it.

"Deliberate wrong inputs are criminally pursued and indicated" is pretty funny.  Are they saying they will pursue the inputs?  Are they saying they'll pursue you in a criminal manner?  And if they plan to "indicate" you, will they also indict you? 

IRS does not calculate Federal Income Tax based on "fiscal activity". 

The problem with this crap is that there is no mechanism for enforcement.  The Feds admit that they don't have the means or the money to chase after offshore Internet scammers.  We're spending huge sums of money to try to find Osama Bin Laden (which is probably worthless since when we get him, two more will spring up in his place) but the government can't seem to touch spammers and scammers who operate in the Soviet Republics, Africa, the Middle East or Asia.

Neal:  I have gotten the same sort for thing from someone posing as PayPal or EBAY saying they need to verify my credit card information.  I reported them to the appropriate people.  It's scary how much of this goes on.  You really can't trust any email that wants you to provide info or click on to some link.

Neal,

Thank you for sharing about this scam.  I am going to pass this one on because I haven't seen this one before.  Internet fraud is such a huge problem and the more knowledge about what is taking place the better.

Hey Neal, I got a few of these and it actually made me giggle :)

looking in the headers of the email i found the IP address and traced it to Britain. (Ip 213.171.222.93), and the sending mail server also had a .co.uk extension (smtp.nildram.co.uk),.. and if that wasn't enough, they tried to hide the sending email so the headers revealed the email they sent it to, which is from one of my contact forms. 

ok, enough techie talk.. when you put your mouse over the link, this is the address that appears in the bar at the lower left side of your screen.. http://www.criticalsecret. org/abc.html (i made it unclickable)

yeah, the IRS working off a domain 'criticalsecret.org'.  hmmm, i wonder who ownes that domain..?

some dude in France!! HA!
ALIETTE GUIBERT
12, passage saint pierre amelot
PARIS
75
75011
France
Phone: +33.10148059
Fax: +33.10148059
E-mail: aguibert-certhoux@noos.fr

too funny!!!! makes you wonder!! (i got a wonderberry!!)

EDIT: so i clicked that domain and it redirects you to another.. universimed.com which is owned bysome dude in Austria (i suspect is a university in Europe that was breached and they culprits are hijacking their server..

Chlud Wolfgang
Universimed Verlags und Service GmbH
Wien
-
A-1130
Austria
E-mail: office@universimed.com \

btw, that domain is hosted on a server in Amsterdam
RIPE Network Coordination Centre
P.O. Box 10096
Amsterdam
1001EB
Netherlands

dang!! talk about covering your tracks!! :)

Neil,

I wish I read this sooner, my sister's computer company just took my home Computer, because of this Trojan Virus, it cost my wife thousands of pictures, most irreplaceable...

Thanks for some additional lookout,

Tom Weiss

I have gotten this on several times also - however, I have sent this to spam - I never thought to send it to the IRS though.

Tom, if they haven't erased everything yet, call me. i have tools to recover things like this. i've banged up som many hardrives and recovered more that you can imagine. let me know if i can help. yes, i'm a geek :) but a cool one :)

now i got a waterberry.. that sounds better

Neal- I've gotten this one and hundreds of others.. and that was just yesterday's mail.. I'm so tired of all the junk mail.. but as Nick showed it's hard to track these guys down.. Instead of all the drug company ads on TV might be a good idea to post a few public service commercials telling people the perils of clicking on these ads..

Nick,

I think they tore up the hard drive, but yeah I will call, give me a little bit... Computer man you rock!!!

Tom Weiss

Hey...how come they offered you more?  They only offered me $96 .....heheh.  I got two of those....I have also received the Nigeria, China and even ones saying their relative died and want to give me money.

Neal - Haven't got this one yet, I figure it is only a matter of time.

Nick,

Interesting how you were able to track that.

Tom,

I lost my hard drive a month ago.

Kay,

Pretty cool how he got that far..lets call the guy:) 

Sally,

No idea...I even got it 5 times:) 

Jason,

Don't worry ...it will probably come as the Ca[ital One Bank:)

Neal - When I originally started receiving these, my refund was $89.30, it is now over $120. It keeps going up, maybe I'll get lucky! I did report it months ago.

It is amazing the scams people come up with.  I have the new Norton 2007 and it has a function that can determine if the website is fraudulent.

Okay, Neal... if you're going to keep outing me to the 'Rainers I'm going to stop sending you email.

By the way, I recently discovered that you are the heir to a large fortune from your descendent in Spamistan. Please contact me soon for.....

Paula,

Yeah...all 5 of mine were the same amount...but that added up over 1000:)

Rob,

My PC Cillin does the same...I just keep sending it to the fraud department..whatever that will do.

Joey,

Yeah right...I'll send your email to the fraud department:)

My first tip it was a bad e-mail was I got about 12 of them in the same day. Several slightly different.  OK maybe that was the 2nd tip.  The first was the IRS e-mailing me.

Randy,

Come on...the IRS wants to give you back all the hard earned money they already collected from us:)

My accountant said maybe I should take it...more than she anticipated me getting back:)

If they are caught, I wonder if I can taser them for about 3 seconds.

Paul,

They leave a large trail with no ending.