COEUR d'ALENE - A scam that started appearing before the April 15 tax filing deadline is now popping up in Kootenai County.

Crooks posing as IRS collectors are targeting taxpayers, telling them they owe money, and if they don't pay up, they're going to jail.

Patricia Hendricks of Coeur d'Alene received one of the calls Tuesday on her cellphone, which she answered while parking her vehicle before going in to her job at LaCrosse Health and Rehabilitation.

A man with a heavy accent told her he was an IRS agent and that she was behind on her taxes. She told him to send her a letter.

"Then he said, 'If you don't pay now over the phone, we will send cops to your place of employment and have you arrested,'" Hendricks said. "I said, 'Go ahead,' and I hung up the phone."

When Hendricks told people at LaCrosse about the call, several of them told her they had received similar phone calls.

Hendricks said the caller's accent, and the fact that the message was being transmitted over the phone, were both tip-offs that the caller was a crook trying to steal her money.

"What concerns me is that I know a lot of elderly people here who would not sleep for weeks because some IRS guy called them and said he's going to arrest them," Hendricks said.

The Federal Trade Commission published a report in early April warning the public of the scam in which victims are told that if they don't comply with the caller's demand for money, they will be arrested, deported or their driver's license or business license will be taken away.

The FTC warned that IRS scam callers sometimes call a second time from a different number, claiming to be the police or the DMV.

"Thousands of victims have lost money to these tax scam artists," the FTC report stated. "But there are ways to recognize them and foil their attempts to steal your money."

* The IRS contacts people about unpaid taxes by postal mail, not by telephone.

* The IRS doesn't ask for payments via prepaid debit card or wire transfer, nor will they ask for credit card numbers.

* Don't be fooled by callers who provide badge numbers or calls coming from official-looking phone numbers. The badge numbers are often faked, and callers rig caller identification information to make it appear they are calling from IRS offices.

The FTC suggests people who receive these calls take the following steps:

* Don't provide any account or other personal information.

* Hang up the phone.

* Never wire money to a person or company you don't know. Once you wire money, you can't get it back.

* People who have already paid their taxes should call and report the incident to TIGTA at (800) 366-4484.

* Forward emails from the IRS to phishing@irs.gov. Don't open any attachments or click on any links in those emails.

* File a complaint with the FTC at ftc.gov/complaint. Include the phrase "IRS Telephone Scam" in the complaint.