With tax season here, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office would like to remind residents of a scam that has been circulating for the past several years.

The scheme is an attempt to trick email recipients into providing personal and financial information. 

The scam itself is called phishing, and is done by criminals who send out emails from a trustworthy sounding email address, such as “tax-refunds@irs.gov.”  If the victim opens the email they are then asked to click on a link taking them to an area where they provide personal and financial information in order to obtain a refund check.

Residents should know that the Internal Revenue Service does not ask for personal identifying or financial information through unsolicited emails. 

If you receive such an email, you should not open it because it may contain a malicious code that will infect your computer.