Is someone on the phone telling me to buy gift cards to avoid arrest?
This is Officer Kevin Harris, badge number 4781, with the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division. We have a federal tax lien and an active warrant issued under your Social Security number. Local police have been dispatched to your address. However, if you cooperate right now we can resolve this and recall the officers. You need to stay on the line with me. Drive to the nearest Target or Walgreens, purchase four $500 Google Play gift cards, then read me the card numbers and PINs on the back. Do not hang up. Do not speak to anyone in the store. If you disconnect this call, the arrest will proceed.
Scam, without needing any other detail. The payment method settles it: no legitimate business or agency takes payment in gift cards, and the FTC says so flatly. Whoever is on the phone, whatever the debt or emergency, the moment gift cards are named the conversation is over.
How to spot this scam
- Payment is demanded in gift cards, and you are told which shop and which brand to buy.
- You are asked to read the numbers from the back of the card over the phone. That is the transfer; there is nothing to reverse afterwards.
- The caller stays on the line while you drive to the shop, and tells you what to say if staff ask.
- The pretext is authority or fear: a tax debt, a warrant, a relative in trouble, a computer infection.
- There is a deadline of minutes or hours. Real obligations do not expire that fast.
- The FTC lists the same set of methods scammers insist on, gift cards, wire transfers, cryptocurrency and payment apps, because each is hard or impossible to reverse.
What to do now
- Hang up. You are not obliged to continue any call, and nothing legitimate is lost by ending it.
- Never read gift card numbers to anyone. If you are asked to, that alone is the answer.
- If you already paid, keep the cards and receipts and call the card issuer straight away to ask them to freeze the funds. Some money is recoverable if the balance has not been drained.
- Report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and to the gift card company.
- Check any claimed debt independently, using a number from a bill or an official site you reached yourself.
- Warn anyone in the household who might get the same call, because these lists get reused.
What it looks like on your phone
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Private. Never sold, never tied to you.
Sources and reporting
Use official channels to confirm a suspicious request and report fraud.