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RECENT SCAMS

| Published on 5/2/2018

INCREASE IN W-2 PHISHING CAMPAIGNS
May 5, 2018

Beginning in January 2017, IRS’s Online Fraud Detection & Prevention (OFDP), which monitors for suspected IRS-related phishing emails, observed an increase in reports of compromised or spoofed emails requesting W-2 information. Sometimes these requests were followed by or combined with a request for an unauthorized wire transfer.

The most popular method remains impersonating an executive, either through a compromised or spoofed email in order to obtain W-2 information from a Human Resource (HR) professional within the same organization.

Individual taxpayers may also be the targeted, but criminals have evolved their tactics to focus on mass data thefts.

This scam is just one of several new variations of IRS and tax-related phishing campaigns targeting W-2 information, indicating an increase in the interest of criminals in sensitive tax information.

For more information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, please click here.