Iras warns of scam e-mail sent by 'MOF chairman' asking for account details, tax receipts
In the e-mail, the sender claims to be the chairman of the Ministry of Finance and asks recipients for their full account details. PHOTO: IRAS/FACEBOOK
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PUBLISHED ONSeptember 14, 2019 2:10 AMByClement Yong
SINGAPORE - The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras) issued a warning on Friday (Sept 13) regarding a scam e-mail and advised the public not to share personal or financial information.
In the e-mail, the sender claims to be the chairman of the Ministry of Finance. Written with grammatical mistakes, it asks recipients for their full account details and a scanned copy of their tax receipts, so that US$40,000 (S$54,935) can be credited to them.
Iras said members of the public should not respond to the e-mail. If they shared their personal or financial information, they should lodge a police report, change the passwords on their online accounts and contact their banks to stop any transactions.
The comes after Iras warned last month of a tax refund scam circulating on WhatsApp. Members of the public were advised to avoid responding or circulating the scam e-mail image with the header "Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore-Refund-Online-Confirmation".
The scam e-mail instructed the receiver to download and complete a tax refund form from a link provided, before submitting it.
The receivers were falsely informed that they would receive a tax refund of $236.51.
Iras said that its official e-mails are not sent out from personal e-mail accounts such as Hotmail or Gmail.
It also said that it does not ask the public for confidential personal details on the phone or instruct them to make payment to a third-party bank account.
Other scams impersonating the taxman have been reported in August too, including another e-mail scam containing fake tax invoices, which instructed receivers to make payments.
Iras also received reports of the public receiving calls from scammers impersonating tax officials and requesting outstanding taxes to be paid.
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This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.