Building a Digital Defense Against IRS Child Tax Credit Fraud — FBI

Welcome to the Oregon FBI’s Tech Tuesday segment. Today: Building a digital defense against child tax credit scams.

This warning comes to us thanks to our partners at the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division. Millions of American families started receiving the advance Child Tax Credit payments last month. If you get a phone call, email, or text message or see a social media post offering help you get these payments, watch out.

Any communication offering assistance to sign up for the Child Tax Credit or to speed up the monthly payments is likely a scam. When receiving unsolicited calls or messages, taxpayers should not provide personal information, click on links, or open attachments as this may lead to money loss, tax-related fraud, and identity theft.

Although scammers constantly come up with new schemes to try to catch taxpayers off-guard, there are simple ways to identify if it is truly the IRS reaching out.

• The IRS does not…