Today I got a series of unwanted emails from fake Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Agents going by the names Robby Buchanan and Michelle Suarez. The emails titled "Federal Tax payment canceled" and "Rejected Federal Tax payment" both contained what appear to be links to a government form ending in .pdf.exe that if downloaded would most likely have unleashed a virus on my computer. The bad files also contained links to the URLs http://taxessitereports4754.info/ and http://taxeslinkreports36343.info/ both of which appear to be bogus domains. I thought about replying to the email just to see if the email addresses Michelle_Suarez@irs.gov and Robby_Buchanan@irs.gov were in fact real, but replying to the messages would have required me to download content blocked by Outlook which I will never do.
The IRS never does business with people online like this, so whoever sent me these emails needs to stop. I'm not a moron and I will not reply favorably to phishing emails that will probably try to get my social security number. I already got a tax refund from the federal government this year, so I know that my bank didn't try to make a payment on a debt that does not exist.
I've taken a screenshot of one email for this article and the other email was as follows:
Your Tax payment (ID: 928622278663), recently from your checking account was canceled by the your Bank.
Canceled Tax transfer
Tax Transaction ID: 928622278663
Rejection Reason See details in the report below
FederalTax Transaction Report tax_report_928622278663.pdf.exe (self-extracting archive, Adobe PDF)
Internal Revenue Service, Metro Plex 1, 8401 Corporate Drive, Suite 300, Landover, MD 20785