Jon and Lana were invited to a Halloween party through a friend of a friend. It was a catered event with a cover charge. Their friend had told them it was a networking kind of thing, and the host simply wanted success-minded people to get together and mingle.

The party would be heavily decorated and have a few Halloween-themed booths that people could visit for amusement, but costumes were discouraged. Bring a resume or pass out business cards, and you'd be asked to leave. The host had a registry. Fill out your information, and you get a special, Halloween-themed identity (Dracula, Casper the Ghost, etc.). Interested parties could inquire on that basis and the host would pass the information along.

As Jon and Lana were struggling small business owners with a payroll of 8 people, they thought this sounded great. A night off, just to have fun and mix. And maybe they'd meet good business contacts with no fear of running into the networking pest from hell.

What they didn't know was the host was an IRS employee trolling for a promotion. The party was a way of discovering all kinds of information about people, stuff they don't put on their tax forms.

Consequently, Jon and Lana's business was raided six months later and shut down. Turns out it was all a mistake, based on false assumptions from the information gleaned at the party. After holding the business assets for a year, the IRS decided there wasn't any problem after all. In the meantime, Jon and Lana had to lay off all 8 employees.

But with a business, you don't just pick up where you left off. Regular customers had moved on, and everything else that had been set in place was no longer there. Jon and Lana lost their home and everything else.

Moral of the story: You never know where an IRS scumbag might be lurking. So be careful what you say.