It was only a matter of time. Finally, the call came Wednesday morning.

The man on the line said he was calling about an “enforcement action” on behalf of the Treasury Department. Clearly, he was leading up to a tax audit or penalty of some kind.

The broken nature of the message on our answering machine suggested the Treasury Department had sketchy phone service. The caller’s accent made us think the feds had outsourced the work overseas  — perhaps to Pakistan?

We were dreading this. The “Treasury Department” scammers  finally dialed our home phone number. My husband, Ed, knew what to do after listening to just a few seconds.

Delete.

Anyone who has dealt with an IRS dispute knows the government doesn’t try to collect taxes and penalties by leaving phone messages. The IRS sends letters and creates paper trails.

This is just one of countless scams brought to us by changing telecommunications and computer technology. Innovation is a two-edged sword; one side improves our lives, the other provides new tools for the criminal underworld.

Though scams like this have been reported as long ago as 2010, in some dark corner of the world the callers have recently been dialing Salisbury phone numbers.

The Rev. Steve Combs of Salisbury received a message similar to ours. His caller accused him of not responding to two certified mailings. The man told Combs to call him at a number that had a Washington, D.C., area code.

Combs said he called the number, and a man who called himself Patrick answered. Like the earlier caller, he had an Indian or Pakistani accent. At first Combs took that as a sign the government was being inclusive as an employer.

Patrick said Combs owed $3,986 in back taxes and could face a $20,000 fine. In fact, the man said, there was a warrant out for Combs’ arrest. All Combs had to do was withdraw that amount from his own checking account and … that’s when Combs knew something was wrong.

The Treasury Department would not tell him to deposit cash into a mysterious bank account.

“I think I’ve been scammed,” Combs said in a call to the Post. He didn’t lose any money, but the experience felt wrong.

The N.C Attorney General’s Office received reports of such calls from more than 1,000 consumers last year, up from just 13 the year before. Twenty-two people lost a combined total of $98,703 by following the fraudulent callers’ directions to send money via wire transfer or Green Dot MoneyPak card.

Don’t let that happen to you.

“Scammers posing as tax collectors are using fear and deception to swindle thousands of dollars from North Carolinians,” Attorney General Roy Cooper said. “If you get a call saying you could be arrested if you don’t pay taxes right away, don’t fall for it. Hang up the phone and report the call to us.”

Because of scammers and unwelcome telemarketers, many of us have come to rely on caller I.D. to screen our calls. An “out of area” number with no identification is a clear giveaway. No way are we picking up that call.

The “enforcement action” people piqued our interest by making caller I.D. show my husband’s name and our phone number. We knew we weren’t calling ourselves, but we wondered who was.

Whitey Harwood, another Post reader, reported being spooked by the same phenomenon — looking at caller I.D. only to see his own name and number pop up.

How do they do that?

Caller ID service is susceptible to fraud, too, unfortunately. In a practice known as “spoofing,” callers deliberately fake the number and name displayed on caller ID to disguise their identity.

Sometimes they’ll choose the name and number of a law enforcement agency, hospital, business or some other trusted institution.

The practice is so common that Congress passed a law against it several years ago, the Truth in Caller ID Act. To put it mildly, the law is not proving effective as a deterrent.

Meanwhile, Cooper’s office recommends that you always be skeptical of unsolicited calls. Don’t rely on Caller ID to help you decide if a call is legitimate. Don’t give out personal information like Social Security or bank account numbers.

And, if you’ve fallen victim to a scam or are considering responding to an unusual caller demanding money, call the Attorney General’s Office.

The number to call — and this is legit — is 1-877-5-NO-SCAM.

Elizabeth Cook is editor of the Salisbury Post.