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Orientation days at Misericordia for first-year students

Wilkes accepting doctor of education degree applications

<p>The letter &#8220;i&#8221; in IRS does not stand for iTunes.</p><p>Keep that in mind if you receive a phone call from someone claiming to be an Internal Revenue Service agent and demanding payment for unpaid federal taxes in the form of gift cards to the popular online music library and media player. You&#8217;re definitely being played for a fool.</p><p>Scammers long have preyed on people by pretending to be debt collectors, badgering their unsuspecting victims to immediately ante up the &#8220;owed money&#8221; with Western Union-style wire transfers or prepaid debit cards. More recently, the crooks&#8217; preferred payment method appears to be gift cards for iTunes, Amazon and other major retailers.</p><p>A Wilkes-Barre man recently told police that he was swindled out of $500. He reportedly relented to a caller&#8217;s orders that he purchase and provide the code numbers of several iTunes gift cards or face arrest within an hour for tax evasion. After the man complied, the caller boldly asked for even more card numbers, at which point the man spoke to his wife, who advised him to call police.</p><p>Turning over a 16-digit gift card number is equivalent to handing over cash. The transaction is speedy and untraceable, which explains why crooks love it. They take the money, and victims are left with worthless pieces of plastic.</p><p>Ten people in Ohio fell for the iTunes trick earlier this year; each lost between $1,000 and $11,500, according to that state&#8217;s attorney general.</p><p>U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Hazleton, last month issued a warning to the region&#8217;s residents about a &#8220;new wave of IRS phone scams.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;The most important thing to remember is that the IRS would never demand payment over the phone,&#8221; Barletta said in the news release. &#8220;If you receive one of these calls, you should make a note of the number, immediately hang up, and report the call right away.&#8221;</p><p>The congressman&#8217;s news release urged targets of the phone scam to follow these procedures:</p><p>&#8226; &#8220;Contact the Treasury Inspector General for Taxpayer Administration to report the call online by using its &#8216;<a href="https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/contact_report_scam.shtml" target="_blank">IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting</a>&#8217; webpage, or call 1-800-366-4484.</p><p>&#8226; &#8220;Report it to the Federal Trade Commission. Use the &#8216;FTC Complaint Assistant&#8217; on <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/" target="_blank">FTC.gov</a>. Please add &#8216;IRS Telephone Scam&#8217; in the notes.&#8221;</p><p>Similarly, the IRS advises people to be on the lookout for, and quickly report, suspected instances of scams conducted by email. For instance, people pretending to represent the agency might ask you to reply to their requests for private data related to your identity or your financial accounts. Don&#8217;t do it.</p><p>&#8220;The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email to request personal or financial information,&#8221; according to an agency news release.</p><p>&#8220;The IRS also does not ask for PINs, passwords or similar confidential access information for credit card, bank or other financial accounts,&#8221; it states. &#8220;Recipients should not open any attachments or click on any links contained in the message. Instead, forward the email to phishing@irs.gov.&#8221;</p><p>Here&#8217;s the bottom line: If you&#8217;re not shopping at the iTunes store, you shouldn&#8217;t reach to pay for something with an iTunes gift card.</p><p>If you do, odds are you&#8217;ll soon be singing the blues.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Consumer Watchdog</p><p>Mark Jones</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Mark Jones is the Times Leader&#8217;s opinion page editor. Reach him at 570-991-6122 or mjones@www.timesleader.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Consumer Watchdog: Telephone scammers have new affinity for iTunes and other gift cards