Government Impersonation Scams: SSA, IRS & Medicare

Most people picture a scam victim as someone careless. Someone who wasn’t paying attention, or didn’t know any better. After 20 years building and watching these products from the inside, I can tell you that’s not who gets caught. The people who lose money to a government impersonation call are usually careful, responsible adults who did exactly what a careful, responsible adult is supposed to do when a federal agency calls with a problem. They took it seriously.

That’s the whole trick. These scams don’t work by finding foolish people. They work by impersonating the routine, slightly intimidating business of agencies that genuinely have power over your life. Your Social Security number, your taxes, your health coverage. You’re not being asked to trust a stranger. You’re being asked to cooperate with what sounds like normal government paperwork.

So let me walk you through what these callers actually say, agency by agency, and then why the scripts are so effective. Once you’ve seen the structure, the calls stop sounding official and start sounding like what they are.

The category is large and getting larger. The FTC reported $789 million in losses to government imposter scams in 2024, up $171 million from the year before. The losses fall hardest on older adults, who were 36% more likely than younger people to report losing money this way. And the most expensive versions almost always run through a phone call. Among people 60 and over who lost $10,000 or more to an imposter scam, 41% said it started with a call.

“This Is Social Security. Your Number Has Been Suspended.”

The Social Security script is a crime story with you cast as the suspect. The caller says they’re from Social Security, or from the Office of the Inspector General. Your Social Security number, they say, has been “suspended” because it turned up in a crime. Money laundering, drug trafficking, fraud, the specifics change call to call. There may be a warrant. There may be a threat to freeze your bank account. The way to fix it is to confirm your number, hand over a few personal details, and in the worst version, move your money into a “safe” or “protected” account while they investigate.

The hook here isn’t only fear. It’s fear plus rescue. The caller invents a crisis around your identity and then casts themselves as the one official who can save you from it. That combination is much stronger than a plain threat, because it hands you something to do and someone to trust at the exact moment you’re rattled. It works often enough that SSA’s own fraud reporting shows the average reported loss climbing with the victim’s age, reaching well over $12,000 for people in their seventies and eighties.

“You Owe Back Taxes and There’s a Warrant Out for Your Arrest.”

The IRS version drops the rescue and leans entirely on consequences. You owe taxes, usually a specific dollar figure, and you have to pay now. If you don’t, the threats escalate fast. An arrest warrant. Police on the way. Immigration action, deportation, your license revoked. Sometimes it’s a recorded message telling you to call back before you’re arrested. The payment demand is the tell, because it’s always something you can’t claw back. Gift cards. Prepaid debit cards. A wire transfer.

This one works because it borrows the real coercive power of the IRS. Most people know the agency can assess taxes, collect debts, and make life difficult. What most people don’t know is how that actually starts. That gap is the opening. The scammer drops a fake emergency into the space where the real procedure should be, then compresses your time so you can’t stop to check.

The real process is slow and boring by comparison. The IRS opens contact by mail, not by phone. It doesn’t take gift cards. It doesn’t leave threatening robocalls that route you to some other website. And it does not call to threaten you with arrest, deportation, or the loss of your license. A federal agency with the power to garnish your wages does not need to rush you on the phone.

“Good News, You Qualify for a Free Back Brace.”

The Medicare call sounds nothing like the other two, and that’s exactly what makes it dangerous. There’s no accusation. It sounds like customer service. The caller is polite, professional, often calling from a local-looking number. You qualify for a free back brace, they say. Or a knee brace, a wheelchair, a continuous glucose monitor, a genetic testing kit. Or your new Medicare card is already on its way and they just need to “verify” your number and address. Sometimes they’ll tell you your own doctor requested the test.

Here’s why this one is uniquely costly. Your Medicare number isn’t just a billing detail. In the wrong hands it can create medical identity theft, where someone uses your coverage to bill for care you never received. That leaves false entries in your records, treatments billed that never happened, and benefits denied later because Medicare’s system thinks you already received a service. If Medicare decides a genetic test was unnecessary, you can be billed for the entire thing, which can run into the thousands.

The tell is the offer itself. Medicare will never call you out of the blue to sell you something or to hand you a “free” item. Real medical equipment and real genetic testing come through a doctor who is actually treating you, not a telemarketer and a surprise “teledoc” you’ve never met.

Why the Same Trick Keeps Working

Strip away the agency names and these three calls are running the same play. Social Security’s own consumer page boils most scams down to four moves: pretend to be a trusted organization, claim there’s a problem or a prize, pressure you to act immediately, and demand payment in a specific, hard-to-reverse way. Once you can see those four beats, you’ll spot them in every version.

The first engine is borrowed authority. You’re not being asked to trust a random caller. You’re being asked to cooperate with Social Security, the IRS, Medicare. The badge numbers, the agency jargon, the real employee names, the spoofed caller ID, it all serves one purpose. It makes the call feel like ordinary business from an institution you already accept has power over you.

The second engine is arousal, and it cuts both ways. SSA and IRS calls run on fear. Jail, seizure, your name dragged into a crime. Medicare runs on the opposite, the small pleasure of good news and free stuff. Both work because a calm, deliberate brain is harder to scam than an activated one. It’s also why the expensive scams fight so hard to keep you on the live call. A real person can ramp the pressure up, answer your doubts in real time, and, most importantly, keep you from hanging up and calling a calmer relative or the real agency.

These scripts also bleed into each other. A call that starts somewhere else will often hand you off to a fake government agency mid-crisis. The classic version is a tech support scam that begins with a pop-up about a virus, then “transfers” you to a fake SSA, FBI, or bank investigator once they’ve got you scared. Same playbook, different uniform.

The third engine is misdirection, and it’s the subtle one. You’re often not told to “pay.” You’re told to verify. To clear your name. To reactivate a number that was never suspended. To move your money somewhere safe. Reframing the ask as protection rather than payment is what lets otherwise skeptical people go along. A behavioral study published in JAMA Network Open ran a mock government imposter scam on older adults and found that even with a made-up agency and softer pressure than real scammers use, a meaningful share engaged without skepticism, and most of those handed over information that could compromise them. The researchers noted that real fraudsters, using real agency names and harder tactics, would likely do even better. And the 2026 versions are getting more polished, with AI-assisted scripts and synthetic voices that sound far more convincing than the clumsy robocalls people learned to laugh off.

The One Rule That Covers All Three

You don’t need to memorize every script. You need one habit.

Real agencies are completely fine with this. They expect it. A scammer is the only caller who has a reason to talk you out of it, and the moment they push back on you verifying independently, you have your answer.

It helps to know what the real agencies actually do, because the gap is wide:

• Social Security generally only calls if you recently applied for something, already receive benefits and have a pending matter, or asked them to call you. It does not suspend numbers, threaten arrest, or tell you to move money.
• The IRS starts with a letter. It doesn’t take gift cards, doesn’t leave threatening robocalls, and doesn’t call to threaten arrest or deportation.
• Medicare will never cold-call to sell you something or offer a free item, and will never call uninvited to ask for your Medicare number.

If a contact breaks those rules, you’re not dealing with the agency. You’re dealing with someone using its name. This is the same instinct worth teaching anyone you help look after, which is why I covered it from the caregiver’s side in how to protect an aging parent from scams.

If You Already Paid or Shared Something

First, stop talking to them, even mid-call. The pressure only works while you’re still on the line.

Then move fast on containment. Call your bank, card issuer, wire service, or payment app right away and tell them it was fraud. If you sent gift cards, call the card company on the number printed on the card. If crypto was involved, contact the platform. Speed matters more here than getting the wording perfect.

Save everything. Voicemails, screenshots, the caller ID, receipts, gift card packaging, envelopes, any texts or emails. Investigators may ask for the originals later.

Then report it, and know that the main channels do different jobs:

• SSA OIG (oig.ssa.gov) is the right intake point if Social Security, your SSN, or your benefits were involved.
• The FTC (reportfraud.ftc.gov) is the national database for consumer scams of any kind, worth filing even if you lost nothing. If it turned into identity theft, IdentityTheft.gov will build you a tailored recovery plan.
• IC3 (ic3.gov) is the FBI’s intake for the tech-enabled side, including spoofing, email, crypto, wires, and remote access.

For an IRS-specific call, also report it to TIGTA, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. If your Medicare number may be exposed, call 1-800-MEDICARE and check your Medicare Summary Notices for any services you never received. And if you shared enough that you’re worried about your broader identity, freezing your credit is the single most effective free step you can take. Our credit freeze guide walks through the process at each bureau.

One last thing, because I think it’s the part that actually protects people. The shame is the scammer’s best tool after the call ends. People who got caught tend to stay quiet, which keeps the fraud working and keeps them from reporting in time to recover money. These scripts are engineered by professionals to slip past exactly the instincts that usually keep you safe. Falling for one is not a verdict on your intelligence. Saying something quickly is what limits the damage. That’s the whole game.

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Tom Reardon spent over 20 years in product and operations at major identity protection providers. He writes at MyScamGuide.com to give consumers the honest picture the industry’s marketing never did.

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Recommended resources:

• reportfraud.ftc.gov: report any government imposter scam to the FTC, even if you lost nothing
• oig.ssa.gov: report Social Security-related scams to the SSA Office of the Inspector General
• ic3.gov: the FBI’s intake point for tech-enabled and cross-border fraud
• IdentityTheft.gov: FTC’s official recovery resource if a scam becomes identity theft