The Cass County Sheriff’s Office would like the public to reacquaint themselves with an old scam with a twist that’s been going around. Authorities say a victim of the recent scam received a voice mail from someone identifying themselves as an IRS worker and stating the victim owed back taxes and needed to get it resolved. Because the victim knew it was a scam, he didn’t return the calls.

Subsequently, the victim received a call that showed on the caller ID as “County Sheriff’s Office”, which he answered. The individual on the other end of the line claimed to be with the county sheriff’s office and that the sheriff’s office had been made aware that the victim had received calls from the IRS and needed to return those calls and get the situation taken care of.

The victim returned the call to the persons claiming to be with the IRS, who told him he was delinquent on his taxes and for security reasons they didn’t want his bank account info and instead wanted prepaid debit cards. Unfortunately, the victim fell prey to this scam and lost $1,900.

Officials want you to know, that Sheriff’s Offices are not linked to the IRS in any way and will never be contacted by the IRS to make contact with individuals by the IRS’s request. It is quite easy for scammers to make their contact numbers appear to be coming from somewhere or someone else on caller ID. Protect yourselves and your loved ones and share the information.