After one police officer Kyle Roder in Eau Claire, Wisconsin received a very threatening voicemail from someone who identified themselves as an IRS agent, he decided to fight back.
In the Facebook video of the exchange, officer Kyle Roder calls the number and asks, “Hello, is this the IRS? It said to call this number, you said I had committed a fraud or something?”
“But you said you’re going to issue a warrant for me and come to my house,” Roder says. “If you don’t have my address, how are you going to do that?” He also asks how much time he has until his arrest, to which the man replies, “Until our shift is over.”
The would-be scammers plan quickly fell apart when the officer started asking questions that the man couldn't answer including his own name and government badge number.
“This is James Maxwell and I’m holding a badge number of ML0544501221, that’s my badge number.”
When Roder grabs a pen and asks him to repeat the number, however, the phony agent says, “This is James Johnson.” When Roder catches him giving a different name, the man tries to cover up by saying, “James Maxwell Johnson, sir.”
Contrary to the IRS scammers threat, Roder was not hours away from being arrested and in fact the police department says that they don't get arrest warrants from the IRS.
Officer recommends that if you receive a similar call then you should just refrain from engaging with the caller and just hang up.
The police department posted the video on social media to bring awareness to these types of scammers and other tax-based scams.