Massachusetts police department has a surprise for fake IRS callers

The police department in Burlington, Massachusetts, apparently have a bit of a sense of humor when it comes to dealing with IRS tax scamming callers.

What are the details?

On Monday, Burlington Police Department's Lt. Glen Mills received a phone call from the "IRS" that was apparently threatening Mills with an arrest if he didn't fork over money he allegedly owed to the government.

Mills decided to go along with the scammer's plan — and to live-tweet the interaction on Twitter — and continued calling them back again and again to give them a taste of their own medicine.

“They were attempting to commit a crime, and I was attempting to make it more difficult for them,” Mills said, according to WBZ-TV.

Several local residents were targeted throughout the day, the station reported.

“They call up, and they’ll say, ‘Hey this is the IRS we’re going to arrest you, you owe us money, call this number,’ and they’ll give the phone number. So instead of getting that resident they got me,” Mills explained to WBZ.

The station reported that Mills was bent on keeping the caller on the phone for as long as possible, and asked them to complete forms such as the "1099 D-U-M-M-Y form."

"If you would try it with the IRS, they would hang up on you," Mills added.

According to the outlet, such scammers tell their victims that arrest is imminent if they do not pay taxes that are owed to the IRS. The scammers then often tell their victims that these taxes are payable ASAP with gift cards and sometimes even actual credit cards.

Mills said that he hopes that local residents will take heed that these types of calls are, in fact, scams.

“Hopefully with a little humor you can get people to talk about it and warn other people because it’s a serious issue,” Mills said.

What were some of the tweets?

You can read some of the hilarious tweets from the Burlington Police Department's Twitter feed below.

Every other PD has been getting hit lately & today appears to be our turn.

The "IRS" is calling #BurlingtonMA today. We told them not to bother but they insist on trying to scam you anyways.

Please let your vulnerable friends & neighbors know this is going on & not to send $$$

— Burlington Police MA (@burlingtonpd) July 30, 2018

Annoyingly... the scammers must know that we like calling them and messing with them so they are hanging up on us :(

— Burlington Police MA (@burlingtonpd) July 30, 2018

Oh, they answered! So we are asking about filling out tax forms.

— Burlington Police MA (@burlingtonpd) July 30, 2018

We are calling as, "John Johnson" ... "John's" wife is "Betsy"

— Burlington Police MA (@burlingtonpd) July 30, 2018

So John Johnson needed help with the proper forms. This includes the 1099 D-U-M-M-Y form...

They didn't get it...

— Burlington Police MA (@burlingtonpd) July 30, 2018

They finally hung up after arguing over important things like the correct paper weight and color, staples vs paperclips, blue ink vs black ink, etc...

Apparently "John" wasn't cooperating enough with, "Agent of IRS" so Betsy Johnson is going to get arrested. :(

— Burlington Police MA (@burlingtonpd) July 30, 2018

So the number they are asking people to call to pay their taxes and not get arrested is 215-709-1197. If you get a message from "IRS" telling you to call that number we are 100% certain that they are a bunch of clowns and not, "Agent of IRS"

— Burlington Police MA (@burlingtonpd) July 30, 2018

Wishing we had two "IRS" numbers to call so that we can have them on a 3 way conference call to threaten each other... pic.twitter.com/wxsSo69rtz

— Burlington Police MA (@burlingtonpd) July 30, 2018

Anything else?

In March, a similar thing happened in Texas with a local police department — and the end results were entertaining, to say the least.

The video has received over 8 million views on the social media networking platform.

You can watch the officer's interaction with the "tax collector" in the video below.