Watch out for fake 1099-G tax forms

CHARLOTTE — It’s the last weekend to get your taxes done before Monday’s deadline and one local woman wants to warn others about a scam that even our Action 9 team has not come across before.

The woman asked Action 9 not to use her name or show her face, so we’ll call her Melissa. “You don’t know who these people are who do these scams. They could be just lazy, no-good nobodies just trying to quick get money, get people’s information ... but at the same time, you don’t know who they are,” she said.

If you received unemployment, the state sends you a 1099-G for tax purposes.

Melissa told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke a scammer sent her a form that looked like a real 1099-G from the State of Colorado. The formatting is neat and clean and the grammar is correct. In fact, the scammer may have copied an actual 1099-G.

But talk about eerie, Melissa says the scammer did enough homework to know 1) she had actually lived in Colorado at one point (although she says she never received unemployment there), and 2) her new address here in North Carolina to mail her the form.

“They want you to think it’s identity theft to make you panic,” she said. “And I believe their goal is to get you to scan the QR codes and input all your personal information, and then that way they can perform the identity theft.”

She’s probably right about it being some sort of phishing scam, but Melissa was smart enough to stop there and not fall for it.

“I was very stressed. Very frustrated,” she said. “It’s still frustrating that people are getting away with this and trying to scare people.”

If you get a 1099-G form and have any doubts about it, contact your state directly. Stoogenke says he’d start with the unemployment agency as opposed to the Department of Revenue.

Here’s the contact information for both North Carolina and South Carolina’s unemployment agencies:

North Carolina

South Carolina

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