<prompt> Human: My wife and I were going to receive a 3k federal tax refund this year. After waiting about a month to receive it, we received a notice from the IRS saying the Dept of Education had taken the refund to offset past debts. After calling the DoE, they are saying she had two outstanding federal student loans, that had been sent to a collections agency. However, her grandmother paid off all of her federal and private student loans 3 years ago, and her credit report reflects this.After calling the DoE a second time, this operator named a different collections agency that was servicing the loans. This operator was also able to tell us more information about where the loan was dispersed, and it was the same university that my wife went to.The whole thing seems very confusing. My first instinct was to proceed very carefully in case it is a scam. Im also wondering if there is some kind of identity theft going on?What does PF recommend as the next steps? I think this goes beyond the realm of a tax attorney, but not sure where to begin to get answers.EDIT: The other thing very strange to me is that her wages were never garnished. Wouldnt wages be garnished before they went after the tax refund??Assistant: I would log into the NSLDS and view all loans they show active. Then compare all of those loans to the payoff information.Human: One of the sites that the DoE operator told us to go to was: It isnt a .gov domain so I thought maybe it was a scam?  <response>: No they changed to the stupid .com sites for some reason.That site seems legitimate, but I would caution you to tread carefully. 