Rejected Federal Tax Transaction Email Scam

Phishing Alert: Federal Tax Transaction Emails

There are reports of a series of emails going out that are disguised to appear as coming from the IRS (Internal Revenue Service). Please disregard these emails and don't click on any links contained within. They are phishing emails designed to steal your personal information.

Email Examples

Some of the fraudulent emails we've been receiving (they include an official looking IRS logo at the top):

From: Sylvester_Torres@irs.gov (email from addresses vary)
Subject: Rejected Federal Tax transaction
Variants of this email subject include:

• Federal tax payment canceled
• Federal tax payment returned

Message body:

Your federal Tax payment (ID: [randomly generated #]), recently sent from your bank account was returned by the The Electronic Federal Tax Payment System.

Internal Revenue Service, Metro Plex 1, 8401 Corporate Drive, Suite 300, Landover, MD 20785

This email is not from the IRS - the link to the PDF report leads to a site disguised as an IRS site that will attempt to extract sensitive personal information from you. As a rule of thumb, never click on a link within an email. Instead, visit the sites you trust directly by typing their URL (web address) in your browser's address bar.