A Wisconsin police officer called back a man pretending to be an IRS agent after the scammer left a threatening voicemail. In a now viral 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?”
At one point, Roder asks the fake IRS investigator, (who seems unaware he’s the one getting scammed,) for his name and badge number, which the scammer replies, “James Maxwell.” When Roder asks a second time so he could write the name down, the man replied, “James Johnson.” When Roder catches him giving a different name, the man tries to cover up by saying, “my name is James Maxwell Johnson, sir.”
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“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 swindler’s attempt to scare Roder into wiring money gets even less convincing when he offers to identify himself with his name and government badge number. h/t wtvr
Contrary to the man’s claim that Roder was hours from being arrested, the department says they don’t get arrest warrants from the IRS.
Roder recommends that anyone who receives a similar call refrain from engaging the caller and just hang up. The police department decided to post video of the call, which has been viewed millions of times, to educate people.