A Conversation with a Tax Scammer
Today I spoke with a tax scammer. I didn’t get his name or his nationality, but through the course of our conversation I learned a lot about him, and people like him.
Tax scammers are people who impersonate the IRS and persuade American citizens that they are being investigated for tax fraud, often with an associated threat of arrest or lawsuit. The goal is for the unsuspecting “victim” to fall for the ruse and wire an amount of money (usually a couple thousand dollars) to a person who supposedly works for the IRS.
If the “victim” does get around the various safety measures against this type of scam set in place in the money transferring business and the money transfer is successful, the scammer tells them they are free of any charges and it’s over. The money is gone, unable to be traced or returned.
Most people have heard of this scam and are wary of it, particularly during tax season. But there are also many people who aren’t aware of the scam and hundreds of thousands of dollars end up being stolen annually.
For the most part, however, people know the warning signs — there are countless videos on the internet of people trolling the scammer, cursing them, giving them what they think they deserve. They’re funny, I’ll admit. In fact, earlier today I received a call from a tax scammer and trolled him myself, pretending to be innocent in order to waste some of the time in his work day. It seems like the just thing to do right? Waste his time so that maybe one or two less people might not be persuaded to send their money off into the unknown.
But when I received a second tax scam voicemail later in the day, I had an interesting thought; what is the reasoning for this? Why are there so many people trying to pull this scam? Is it so that they can make an easy buck, not put in the effort at an actual job, steal from the wealthy? Do these people enjoy this job of stealing from unassuming grandmothers and those who may not be privy to the ubiquity of scamming? I had a lot of questions.
So I called the number back. A man picked up with a simple “Hello?” I asked, “Is this the fake IRS?” He chuckled and told me that yes, it was indeed the fake IRS. I was surprised! Most of the people who commit this scam immediately hang up upon being discovered, but for whatever reason this man stayed on the line, and even laughed at my accusation! With that I decided to just ask him a question, because who knows, he may answer.
I asked him if people actually fall for it. He told me that in a day of work, fifteen to twenty people will fall for it and transfer money to his “business” within the day. I asked him how much they averaged on any given person and he told me between $2,000 — $5,000. I asked him how much he was going to have me send if I fell for it — $3,450. I was stunned. By now I had gathered that he was most likely Indian based on his accent (and my limited knowledge of southeast asia), that he was a man perhaps in his late twenties, and that he had a sense of humor.
He was someone who really wasn’t very different from me on the surface. So I decided to dive in.
Do you like your job?
No, he doesn’t. He understands that it’s not honest and that the people who fall for the scam need the money, and he doesn’t like hurting people.
So why do you do it?
Because money is worth more in the U.S. than it is in his country. People in the U.S. can deal with not having a couple thousand dollars, they make more per hour, the American people get things cheaper and the U.S. government helps those who have little (he referenced social security and unemployment aid).
In his country, it’s different. The government doesn’t help its’ people. You are born, survive and and die on your own. And your life situation is determined based on where you’re born, who you’re born to — he referenced the caste system and how if you’re in a low caste or even outside the caste, you simply cannot get a job better than a trash man.
Even if you can find a job that’s more dignified (he referenced working at a call center for Microsoft as an example) the pay is very little. He told me that oftentimes customers will claim that the support wasn’t helpful so they have their bank revoke the payment for the service, which in turn means that the call center employee receives no money for the call and he/she also must pay refund processing fees on top of that — essentially, that scenario sucks just as much as being a trash man.
So that leaves him back in his role as a tax scammer. No, he doesn’t enjoy it, it’s not an easy way to make extra cash. In his mind, it’s one of his only choices because of the circumstances he finds himself in.
Who knows what his situation might actually be, but from a human to human perspective, it sounded like he was describing his personal situation — call me naive or too trusting, but I believe that he would have no reason to spin an intricate story like that for some random guy he was trying to scam five minutes earlier.
After hearing his perspective, I felt a sense of sympathy for him. I’ve always wondered why I’ve had the good fortune (the blessing, the luck, whatever) to be born and raised in this country, with a loving family that had plenty of money, and a wealth of opportunity that continues to positively impact my personal life and well-being.
Why do I even have the choice, let alone the ability and the funds, to quit my day job and start a business doing what I love? If that were to fail, why do I have the options of going back to my old job or working for well above minimum wage at a grocery or retail store? In fact, what qualifies me to have the option to earn an American minimum wage (which is significantly greater than most of the world’s highest hourly wages)? Why? Is it pure chance? Is it God’s design and plan for my life to be arguably better or easier than this man’s life? If so, why? What is the significance of that purpose? From the day I was born, I’ve done nothing to deserve what I have at a fundamental level — no one has ever had the ability to choose their own circumstances from birth. So why do we end up where we are?
It makes me question why I do what I do. Why I don’t consider the lives of people like this man more frequently. Why, when I do consider them, I don’t do anything about it. It’s almost as if our minds are wired to cut out these things and just focus on the here and now, or otherwise be distracted. While I eat my third Chik-fil-a meal in two weeks, this man is trying to persuade people to send him money for his survival, another is earning fifty dollars a month picking up trash, barely enough to sustain the meager life he lives.
No, I still don’t think this is right for him to do. But who am I to curse him and tell him to stop when I don’t even know what his life might look like, when I can’t even comprehend what his life might like look. Who knows if he’s lying or not, but the thing that’s stuck in my head is this — is this how our world is, and will it ever be fixed? Is there a way to change the various corrupted or broken aspects of this man’s situation that would allow him to stop?
His answer? That lies in my last question for him.
Do you plan on doing this for the rest of your life?
No. He wants to open and run a business one day. He hopes to be able to use the money that he makes from scamming people to survive and save, until he can put down the money necessary to rent a space, hire workers, buy inventory, without burying himself in debt. One day, when he has a wife and children, he wants to be able to provide for them by doing something that he likes, not by scamming people for their own hard earned money. Sure, he anonymizes the people that fall for the trick — he generalizes their situation so that he can get through the day not feeling awful about what he’s doing. But when it comes down to it, he told me that if survival means feeling awful, sometimes that’s what you have to do.
At the end of our conversation, I asked him if there was anything I could do for him outside of sending him money. He chuckled again and told me that he didn’t want my money. He just wanted me to tell people his story and his perspective, so that when they receive a call they at least know why the person on the other may be doing what they’re doing.
These scams will still make people angry, and rightly so — they’re wrong. His hope is that people will at least consider the vast differences in circumstance and options for people in his situation from those of their own.
I think these scammers at least deserve that.
