Scammers are impersonating the IRS to drain crypto accounts and steal identities, using official-looking letters to bypass digital defences, the agency’s criminal investigation unit warned.
Paper notices that include QR codes are leading recipients to a spoofed Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website, the agency said in a July 30 press release. The scheme directs crypto holders to enrol in a non-existent Digital Asset Compliance Portal before a deadline, then prompts them to enter personal information.
"Criminals continue to exploit public trust in government agencies by creating convincing fake websites and official-looking correspondence,” IRS criminal investigation chief Jarod Koopman said.
The infrastructure supporting the campaign was set up just days before the letters were sent out and used a domain listed through a Hong Kong registrar, the investigators said.
The look-alike website was hosted in Romania on a network "already known for hosting FedEx and banking phishing pages,” signalling that it is a "professional, international fraud operation,” according to a Coinbase Security blog post that details the scheme.
The warning comes as cybercrime is surging, with the FBI casting crypto and AI-related complaints as among the costliest.
In 2025, Americans lost over US$11bil (RM44.95bil) to crypto-related scams, marking a 22% increase from the previous year, according to the FBI Internet Crime Report. The average loss was US$62,604 (RM255,837.50), with more than 18,000 reports of theft greater than US$100,000 (RM408,660). – Bloomberg
