The FBI Salt Lake City Division has recently received numerous reports of increased efforts by scammers to target residents, specifically in communities along northern Montana’s Hi-Line, with unsolicited telephone calls in which the caller claims to be a representative of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or the FBI.

The caller typically advises the recipient of the call that money is owed on taxes and demands payment. The caller threatens that if payment is not made, the FBI will have them arrested. The originating number used by the fraudsters, which appears on caller ID, is masked as numbers for local FBI offices in Montana.

Be advised that federal agencies do not call or e-mail individuals threatening them or demanding that they send money. Scammers often spoof caller ID information, and these phone calls are fraudulent even if they appear to be coming from a federal agency’s legitimate phone number. Recipients should hang up immediately and report the call.

All types of fraud schemes and scams can be reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at www.ic3.gov. Filing a complaint allows analysts from the FBI to identify leads and patterns from the hundreds of complaints that are received daily. The IC3 then refers the complaints, along with their analyses, to the relevant law enforcement agency for follow-up.

In addition, if you think you have been the victim of an IRS impersonation scam, please file a report online with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) at https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/. You can also file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission at www.ftc.gov.