Associated Industries of Massachusetts has asked federal officials to investigate an apparent scam in which a caller claiming to be from the U.S. Department of Labor calls an employer and demands personal information about employees as part of a bogus 401(k) plan audit.

An employer reported to AIM last week that she received a call from someone claiming to be a subcontractor for the Labor Department authorized to perform 401(k) audits. The caller threatened the employer with significant fines (up to $800,000) for failing to cooperate. The caller was seeking a list of all employees covered under the company’s 401k plan, including names and Social Security numbers.

The employer suspected the call was fraudulent and hung up. The employer then searched the phone number and found it was a frequently used scam number based in Nevada. The number was 702-258-9476. A review on the Web found a number of blog discussions about the fraudulent use of the number to sell various unwanted products.

AIM has forwarded the information to the Department of Labor to confirm that the phone call did not come from a DOL employee or contractor. The DOL representative forwarded the information to the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) for further investigation.

If you receive a similar phone call, please notify AIM at 800-470-6277 or via email (Tom Jones tjones@aimnet.org or Terry Cook tcook@aimnet.org) so that we may forward it to the DOL for its investigation.