Issuers and borrowers should watch out for phishing scams in their communications with the IRS’ Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division, as there have been instances in recent months of scammers posing as IRS representatives.
John Stanley, a tax and public finance partner at Orrick and Joseph Santiesteban, private and data innovation partner at Orrick, coauthored a recent warning on the subject. While issuers have become increasingly wary of a variety of cybercrimes targeting them, this particular approach targets debt management directly.
The IRS tries to conduct its audits of tax-exempt bonds in a secure manner, ensuring that no confidential information is improperly disclosed and has established its own electronic messaging service, TEBConnect, to ensure data is securely transmitted and received.
“However, we’ve recently seen emails purporting to be from the IRS regarding the use of its TEGE secure messaging service to respond to an audit of tax-exempt bonds, but that are actually phishing scams intended to steal data from the recipients,” the client alert by Stanley and Santiesteban said.
“Issuers and borrowers should always be on the lookout for phishing and other suspicious emails, whether those appear to be from the IRS or other entities.”
TEBConnect was introduced as…
