Lafave decision today revives gender justice question Scam artists have made a killing on t... Bogus e-mails try to hook taxpay

Scam artists have made a killing on the Internet in recent years, posing as banks or online retailers and sending fake e-mails that trick people into revealing information about their personal finances.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people are receiving bogus e-mails claiming to be from the government's tax-collection agency. Bearing the IRS logo, the messages offer tax refunds and direct consumers to an authentic-looking IRS "clone" Web site that requires the curious taxpayer to disclose personal information before the refund can be claimed.

IRS investigators say a dozen Web sites operated by people in 18 countries are hosting versions of this "phishing" scheme, so called because the perpetrators are fishing for personal data.

Joe Bert of Longwood discovered one of the bogus messages in his e-mail's in-box last weekend. He didn't hesitate to hit the delete button on his computer.

"You had to know right away something was wrong," said Bert, a certified financial planner. "No legitimate organization these days is going to e-mail you out of the blue and ask for information like that."

Unfortunately, some people are falling for the ploy, said Norman Meadows, an IRS special agent in Sarasota and Florida spokesman for the agency's criminal-investigations unit.

The agency has received numerous complaints about the e-mails, Meadows said, including some from worried taxpayers who admit leaving personal information on one of the fake Web sites.

Scammers use such information -- account numbers, Social Security numbers and other personal data -- to steal from bank accounts, commit credit-card fraud and profit from other forms of identity theft, he said.

Taxpayers who receive a bogus IRS e-mail can report it by calling a toll-free Treasury Department hotline at 1-800-366-4484. Anyone concerned about having disclosed sensitive information on a suspect Web site can obtain guidance for dealing with identity theft at a Federal Trade Commission Internet site, www.consumer.gov/idtheft.

"I would suggest it's an equal-opportunity offense," said John Hambrick, unit chief for the Internet Crime Complaint Center, an affiliate of the FBI. "I have seen very affluent and educated people be victimized. The scam artists target people's fears or their greed, and that can cut across many levels."

Phishing scams have become increasingly sophisticated and persuasive, experts said. The fake IRS Web site, for example, is a replica of the agency's real site -- though it asks for information that the IRS never requests via the Internet.

Similar schemes impersonate eBay, PayPal, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and other financial institutions and online retailers. Government agencies such as the Social Security Administration and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. have also been impersonated.

"The reality is most of these e-mail scams are very well designed and disguised," said Matt Certo, president of WebSolvers Inc., a Winter Park-based Internet services company. "And it doesn't take too many folks falling for it for these fraudsters to make a lot of money."

However, the track record for catching and prosecuting phishing scammers is not good, said Avivah Litan, an analyst for Gartner Inc., an information-technology research company. She estimated that the number of phishing attacks has increased 60 percent during the past six months.

"It's very tough to catch the criminal masterminds behind it all," she said. "We believe there are about 30 of these phishing rings out there. . . . There have been some arrests of the flunkies, but the ones in charge are too elusive."

Such rip-offs are still only a fraction of all financial fraud, said David Cowings, a business-technology manager for software giant Symantec Inc., which produces Norton security products. Mail theft, trash-bin diving and other forms of document theft are still the main causes, he said.

But the growing significance of phishing has not been lost on Symantec, Cowings said. The company has developed an e-mail anti-fraud software and introduced it to business customers about a week ago.

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