Latest scam phone call

Fri 12 Mar 2021, 13:34

I too have had nearly a dozen of these calls over the past couple of weeks, including 3 this morning while I was marshalling at the vaccine clinic .  Infuriating ! 

I have passed the phone numbers to phishing@hmrc.gov.uk who encourage you to report the circumstances, the message and the numbers. 

Fri 12 Mar 2021, 12:18

I had a call yesterday claiming to come from HMRC saying they had evidence of me fiddling my taxes but they could prevent a warrant for my immediate arrest if I pressed 1 - the mid- atlantic drawl seemed  odd to me.

However my daughter had a call from Barclays  Fraud Alert recently informing her of suspicious activity on her account. Genuine phone call as it turned out - found that some £650 had been paid to a betting firm in sums of under £10. Barclays told her that a lot of scams are done that way these days in small amounts so less likely to be noticed. Can only congratulate Barclays on picking it up. Sarah has now to instigate fraud action before she can get her money back. She is assured that she will get it back but the process has to be followed.

Fri 12 Mar 2021, 10:52

It's maddening isn't it, Vicky.

Similarly I get multiple calls from 0843 numbers; I just had another one, informing me that "I am eligible for an upgrade to the latest iPhone 12". Most of these calls only ring a maximum of 3 times, but I managed to answer this one before it rang off. I know that there are "number blocker" applications that you can subscribe to, but I am going to investigate the possibility of writing a simple application that will simply refuse and block calls from all 0843 numbers. At present on my phone I probably have around 200 of these numbers blocked. It's a pain.

Fri 12 Mar 2021, 10:24

Just had a recorded message from +4475022275499 claiming to be the "National Crime Agency" telling me my National Insurance number would be suspended if I didn't press 1 .

You've got to laugh really ...