The Christian County TRIAD program along with the AARP are alerting citizens of the potential for fraudulent phone calls regarding the collection of overdue tax debts to the IRS. The IRS is now using four private debt collection agencies to recover unpaid tax depts, and there is concern that scammers may try to emulate phone numbers and caller ID titles of these agencies.

Richard Peters, Director of the Christian County TRIAD program spoke with Regional Radio News and shared what the procedure is when the IRS refers someone’s debt to a collection agency.

TRIAD and the AARP are concerned that scammers may try to imitate the IRS or these collection agencies in an attempt to scam people out of their money.

Peters said people need to be vigilant, and understand that the collection agencies tasked with collecting tax debts will not call you out of the blue, demanding you purchase something such as a greed dot money card to pay the debt.