Whangārei woman who spotted IRD scam warns others

A Whangārei woman who spotted an IRD scam she received via email is warning others to take care.

A Whangārei woman knew something was fishy when she got an email from IRD telling her she had a refund waiting and she had to log on to her internet banking to get it.

For a start, the woman who does not want to be named said, she doesn't do internet banking. And she was aware that there had been scams doing the rounds recently supposedly from IRD.

So she went into the IRD office in Whangarei to check - and they confirmed it was indeed yet another scam.

Now, IRD is warning consumers of the elaborate email scam claiming to be from the tax department. IRD said a new "convincing" email scam which seeks to take advantage of those waiting on a tax refund is doing the rounds claiming to be from Inland Revenue.

In the email which is titled: "Your income tax update", the fraudulent email addresses the consumer directly and states a dollar figure amount refund.

The email says IRD tried to send the refund to you automatically but were "unable to do so as we don't have your details on file". It asks if you are "ready to refund it now".

IRD said this should raise alarm bells as the tax department does not include personalised greetings in its emails and does not include the dollar amount in refund emails.

The Whangārei woman said the email she received last week said she was due to receive a $138 tax refund. That didn't raise any real alarms as it's the time of year when she would be notified about a tax refund, if she was due one.

However, when it asked her to log on to her internet banking account a red flag went up straight away.

''I don't do internet banking so I thought straight away it was a scam so I went into the IRD office in Whangārei to talk to them about it and they said it is a scam,'' she said.

''While there I thought I'd ask about any tax refund and they told me I actually owed them $6.''

The woman said she made her close encounter with scammers public to warn others not to be fooled into being scammed.

''There seem to be so many scams out there and people always need to check and double check anything they receive.''

Inland Revenue spokeswoman Sharon Thompson said the scam appeared to be widespread, with more than 900 reports of the email so far.

"It looks like the real thing but has some tell-tale mistakes that people can use to tell it's a scam," Thompson said.

"Embedded links can look quite convincing at first glance as "ird.govt.nz" can be included within the address. But if you hover over those links, you'll see Inland Revenue is not the destination."

IRD is prompting customers who receive this email to forward the fraudulent email to phishing@ird.govt.nz.

The tax department has been hit with a number of scam emails this year. In June another fake tax refund email requesting bank account details was being sent around.

A spokesperson said scams have become more sophisticated over time and people need to be "very careful" when they receive unexpected emails.

"Often the links come back up again and we get them taken down again."

Inland Revenue's tell-tale signs of scams:
• The scammer may pressure you to make a decision or do something quickly.
• The email, phone call or text may be threatening. The scammer might want to be paid in unusual ways such as gift cards, bitcoin or money transfer systems.
• A scammer may ask for your bank account details. IRD says: "We will never ask you to email or text us this information – we will always ask you to supply this through myIR."
• The scammers might ask for passwords to your online accounts. Legitimate organisations will never ask for passwords.
• Scammers often give website or email addresses that are wrong but look almost right. For example, they might send you to ird.co.nz, ird.qovt.nz or ird.gov.nz, instead of the correct ird.govt.nz