Dear Annie: I know this has come up before, but I want to put out another warning to people. I recently worked with a client who had been scammed out of more than $16,000. She had to take a home loan out on her house to pay for this.
What was the scam? Someone called and said they were from the IRS and that she owed back taxes. She is a widow whose husband died about three years previously, and she said he always handled the taxes.
They scared her and told her she had to go to a store, get a prepaid Visa card and call them with all the card information, which she did. I don’t know the exact amount they told her to send, but they called back and said she owed more and had to reload the card. She did this at least three times. Finally, a clerk at the grocery store she went to realized something wasn’t right and stopped her from sending more money, but the damage was done. The money was gone. She’s on a limited income and now has the added expense of the home loan. It broke my heart.
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