Please be on the lookout for yet another government agency tax scam making the rounds today; this one not spoofing the IRS, but rather the US Tax Court. 

Here is an elided sample that has been received by our Threat Operations Center:

UNITED STATES TAX COURT WASHINGTON, DC 20217

Docket No. 622-555. Filed May, 2008. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE Petitioner. v. EXECUTIVE NAME HERE COMPANY NAME HERE COMPANY PHONE NUMBER HERE Respondent.   PETITION The Petitioner hereby petitions for a redetermination of forth by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in his notice of deficiency (AP:FE:BOS:JHK) dated May 4, 2008 Please download a Copy of the Order, Letter, Notice or Other Document Being Appealed This matter is before the Court on respondent.s Motion for Summary Judgment, filed May 10, 2006, and respondent.s Motion for Penalty under I.R.C. Section 6673, also filed May 10, 2006.  As motions, without prejudice, and remand this case to respondent.s Office of Appeals. Respectfully submitted, Bennett H. Klein Tax Court Bar No KB0214 400 Second Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20217.

The link in above sample goes to a web page hosted at the domain us-tax.org, which was just registered 4 days ago, May 8th.  Based on the format of the scam URL in the above message this looks very much like some of the other recent executive targeted scams (like the US District Court scam that I also blogged about) that we have seen lately.  It would not surprise me if the same people behind those scams are also originating from the same group of people.


*** UPDATE 5/12/2008 12:40pm MDT *** We are currently seeing these whaling scams hit our systems at the rate of about 150 per hour.  Very low volumes in an attempt to fly under the radar as much as possible.