A very kind reader sent in this letter to me. In my opinion it has to be one of the most deceptive looking debt relief marketing mailers I’ve seen in a while.
The letter does not come from the Internal Revenue Service or the Department of the Treasury. It is a lead generation letter that is designed to get consumers to call the telemarketing number labeled “The Department of Advocacy Services.”
If you want to really know what IRS Publication 4681 is, click here. You will discover it is just a routine reporting guide for forgiven debt. It is not a new program and has nothing to do with settling your debts “in as little as 12 months.”
Disgusting.
If you have a credit or debt question you’d like to ask just use the online form. I’m happy to help you totally for free.
If you give your social security number and birthdate to someone how can you stop them from using it illigally
You can’t. The best thing at that point would be to enter into some three bureau credit monitoring program to make sure no surprise accounts are opened from identity theft. One free solution is to signup for the free credit monitoring from Credit Karma. That service only monitors your TransUnion and Equifax reports. It does not monitor your Experian credit bureau report.
There’s a variant of this one a few months ago specifically referencing student loan debt, I received one a few months ago.
Just got a letter that was identical to this one and is VERY MISLEADING….can give the impression that IRS is sending out mail being that is one of their first tips in recognizing the IRS phone scams
I received same letter with different number stops at bottom of first page and does not have second page just like above received on June 20 2016
We received this letter today and my wife was itching to call but I asked her to hold on then got on here and found this so thank you Steve. Never can be too careful.
Thanks for posting this, just received this letter myself and am glad to see my suspicion of it was correct.
I got this exact letter this morning. Came to the same conclusion that it was a phishing letter. Is there nothing these folks will not do to get our money?
No.
Ya, this one has been popping up all over the place for the past 12 months or so. It is just a debt settlement lead generation letter.
That has to be the first scam letter I’ve seen with no spelling errors. Definitely deceptive and disgusting. Thanks to your reader for sharing this.