Eau Claire police officer managed to outwit an IRS scammer on the phone.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if someone tried to pull a fast one on a police officer over the phone? Well, it seems that a recent incident which took place in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on Tuesday reveals that police officers can be just as cunning as phone scammers. A law enforcement officer from the town of Eau Claire recorded his conversation with a fake IRS agent and posted it on Facebook. The clip was viewed about 5 million times and shared 130,000 times.
Everything started on early Tuesday when Officer Kyle Roder of the Eau Claire Police Department received a text message on his cellular phone. The message informed the officer that if he refused to call back, he would be immediately arrested.
Being with the Police force for some time, Officer Roder realized that this might be some sort of phone scam, and decided to call back and to try to outsmart the scammer. Roder also asked a fellow colleague to record him during his phone conversation with the man.
After dialing the number a couple of times, a man picks up the phone and informs Officer Roder that he were from the Internal Revenue Service and threatened to arrest him if Roder would not comply. The officer played along and asked the fake IRS agent what he needed.
Seconds later, the man asked Officer Roder to dictate his case number, to which the officer replied that he wasn’t assigned one. After that, the fake IRS agent demanded that the officer supplied him with a valid address.
Being a skilled interrogator, the Eau Claire police officer pointed out that if he didn’t know his address, how could the IRS agent come to his home and arrest him. Now, it was time for Roder to play a little game of cat and mouse.
Shortly after, the officer asked the IRS agent for his IRS badge number and name. This is where things get really interesting. During his first reply, the bogus IRS agent told Roder that his name is James Maxwell and that his badge number read ML0544501221.
Roder asked the IRS agent took a pen and paper and asked the agent to repeat his name and badge number. This time, he said that his name is James Johnson. The officer pointed out that he said that his name was James Maxwell, to which the IRS agent replied that his full name is James Maxwell Johnson.
Well, the recording ended up on Roder’s Facebook page, where it was viewed more than 5 million times and shared 130,000 times.
Image source: Wikipedia