Police this week urged residents to be wary of an ongoing scam in which a telephone caller claiming to be an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent seeks to defraud the person being called of money, claiming that they have a tax debt that must be paid immediately.

Police said that in one recent case, an approximately 60-year-old woman resident was bilked of nearly $7,000 through such a fraud.

On September 1, the female victim received a call from a man who falsely identified himself as an IRS agent, police said. The man told the woman that she owed the IRS approximately $6,800 and that if she did not pay that debt immediately, she would be arrested, would be sued in court, and would have her passport revoked.

The man told the woman that to repay that debt, she had to obtain either Target of Walmart gift cards equaling the amount of money owed to the IRS and then mail those gift cards to an IRS address in Washington, DC.

The woman complied, obtaining $6,892 worth of Target gift cards. The address that the man had given her for mailing purposes is an actual IRS address in Washington, DC, police noted.

However, before she mailed those gift cards, the criminal claiming to be an IRS agent had the woman read to him, on the telephone, the gift cards' redemption numbers, which are listed beneath scratch-off panels on the back of the gift cards. After receiving those redemption numbers, the criminal immediately had access to the $6,892 of Target store credit.

Through that scheme, criminals obtain basically untraceable store credit that they spend immediately.

The gift cards, which later were received by the IRS in the mail, had been depleted of any credit value because the criminals had already used the redemption codes for purchases.

The woman who was bilked of the money later grew suspicious and informed police of the incident.

Police stress that the IRS will never call taxpayers on the telephone and demand immediate payment of  nonexistent tax debts via gift cards, prepaid debit cards, or a wire transfer. The IRS contacts people via the US Postal Service about such matters. Also, the IRS allows taxpayers to question and appeal any actual tax debt, police said. The IRS will never ask anyone via telephone for their credit card numbers or their debit card numbers.

Police urge anyone who receives such suspicious calls from anyone claiming to be an IRS agent and urging immediate payment to contact the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 800-366-4484.

Police are also warning residents to avoid participating in any selling/buying transactions in which the resident does not make personal contact with the other party in the transaction. Scams are being conducted on internet websites, such as Craigslist, in which the other party has a particular criminal reason to resort to using only e-mail as a means of communication, rather than making contact through a telephone call or in person, police said.