IRS Agents With Indian Accents Not Really IRS Agents, Tinley Park Woman Learns Too Late

TINLEY PARK, IL — Two men and a woman who spoke with Indian accents while claiming to be IRS agents hoodwinked a Tinley Park resident out of more than $22,000.

The phony IRS agents convinced the 54-year-old woman that she owed $87,972 in unpaid taxes, penalties and fees, but were kind enough to accept $22,100 to just forget about the whole thing.

The grifters, one of whom identified himself as “Agent Kevin Black” and another who said she was “Agent Catherine Braun,” kept the woman on the phone for 10 and a half hours straight, police said, during which time they got her to withdraw thousands of dollars from her bank account, deposit the cash in another bank account, and send out eight MoneyGrams. The MoneyGrams were sent to people in Chicago, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Once she had spent all that time on the phone and distributed the thousands of dollars, the woman had an epiphany, police said.

She “realized that she was ‘scammed’ and reported the incident on the next day,” a report said.