Cayman Islands: Scammers Target Businesses and Residents Using IRS

According to the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service (RCIPS), companies asserting to be the Internet Revenue Service (IRS) or lottery agents are trying to dodge the residents and businesses of the Cayman Islands.

The Financial Crimes Unit of RCIPS has once again alerted the residents of Cayman Islands against the e-mail scam, which could led them to loose their wealth. Business firms of the region are also receiving large volumes of such fake e-mails.

The fraudulent e-mail states that the IRS is requiring personal and professional credentials in order to confirm whether or not the recipient is liable to pay the United States of America Tax.

Detectives are also investigating the reports associated with other e-mail scams. A common e-mail scam announces the recipients as the winners of some goods or certain luring amount of money in a lottery or competition. Then the scammers ask for the administration charges to release the cash prize or goods.

However, according to RCIPS, investigations with the legitimate IRS revealed that this is just a scam fabricated to illegally obtain the personal credentials of the users like bank account numbers, passport numbers and mother's maiden name.

IRS further stated that the authentic IRS form W-8BEN rarely asks for the Social Security or IRS-generated Taxpayer Identification Number. Moreover, the financial institution of the user is responsible for sending the legitimate W-8BEN forms, not the IRS.

Moreover, in recent times, global economic crisis has given the golden opportunity to the cyber criminals to expand their unlawful business. Taking the advantage of present situation, they are designing new phishing e-mails, offering the users credit or finance from futile banks. Some of the usual scam attacks comprise of the variations in the old 411 scams like the one urging the recipients to shift their money from developing nations.

The scam e-mails are also reported to offer loans on low interest rates, credit refinancing and approvals of the credit cards. Also, the financial insecurity among the people is attracting them towards such bogus offers.

In order to secure themselves from such scams, users are advised by the IRS to change their passwords at regular intervals. In any case, recipients are asked to avoid such unwanted e-mails.

Related article: China’s Best Initiatives To Deal With Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 11/25/2008