At 99-years-old, Katherine Leaphart says she’s blessed to be here every day. Retired since 1991 after working for the department for corrections, she leads a simple, quiet life at a senior living facility in Allen Park.
“I have a niece who says she wants to be like me,” she said on Wednesday. “She wants to be retired longer than she worked.”
Last week, a letter arrived, seemingly from the IRS, saying that it needed her bank account information to further process a tax refund.
The letter sported the IRS logo, a notice number, a seemingly legit website address, and – strangely – a QR Code.
Confused by the letter, she called her oldest daughter, Rita Leapheart-Coleman, who immediately knew that this letter was a scam attempt.
“It said that she was going to receive a refund,” Rita said. “I knew after doing her taxes two or three weeks ago that she wasn’t receiving a refund, so I’m like, this is bogus.”
One unique aspect of this scam is that unlike the text, phone, and email scams that have become more prevalent, the IRS still uses letters to contact taxpayers.
A real IRS letter features an IRS logo and treasury address, a notice number, and either a tax id number or social security number. The letter that Katherine received had the IRS logo, the address to the treasury building in Kansas City, and appeared to have a notice number.
However, it was the QR code that tipped Rita off to it being a fake.
“I know the scams are out there, so I just knew that I needed to do something about it,” she said. “The police really don’t have that kind of force to look out for other people. So, you got to make sure you do it for yourself and the people you love.”
Rita says that her mother’s social security number was once compromised, and it was an entire ordeal to protect her accounts.
Katherine Leapheart will celebrate her 100th birthday in October, and Rita wants to make sure that every day she’s here, she doesn’t have to stress about stuff like this.
“You’re going to make me emotional talking about her because I love her dearly. And I don’t want to see nothing happening to her. She’s a good woman, and I’m gonna make sure that she, all the time she has here left, it’s gonna be good.”
There are a few ways you can check to see if a letter is really from the IRS:
- Log in to their secure IRS online account to see if the letter or notice is in their file
- Contact IRS customer service directly online.
- Call 800-829-1040. Follow the IRS representative’s instructions.
Other things you want to look out for are urgent demands for online payment, threats to send you to jail, and one of the biggest clues: look for poor grammar and misspellings in the letters, which are often a giveaway that the form is a scam.