The Evanston Police Department is warning residents to beware of calls purportedly to be from the Internal Revenue Service, particularly if they bear the EPD’s phone number on your Caller ID.
It’s called “spoofing,” according to EPD Cmdr. Joseph Dugan, which is the process of changing the caller ID to any number other than the number that is actually calling, and the department has received a couple of complaints recently that this is actually happening here.
Dugan noted that the IRS “will never ask for immediate payment over the telephone and will not threaten to take enforcement action immediately after a telephone conversation.”
Dugan recommends that you ask for the caller’s name, hang up, and call the police department at (847) 866-5000 to confirm the call.
The IRS says, on its website, that “taxpayers should remember their first contact with the IRS will not be a call from out of the blue, but through official correspondence sent through the mail. A big red flag for these scams are angry, threatening calls from people who say they are from the IRS and urging immediate payment.”