Warn your clients!

One of my client's received such an e mail. The wording of the message was written in very poor English and very obviously bogus.

It always amazes me that anyone falls for these. At least with clients some have the nous to ring you and ask itf its genuine, what about the unrepresented, who are unlikely to check on HMRC.gov.uk or have anyone to ring and ask.

I once had a conversatioin with a client about his spanish lottery win, he hadn't bought a ticket but he'd had a confirmation letter. They work on the basis some people can't seen further than the ££ signs. A friend of mine works for the police and says they get calls all the time, about lottery scams. As she points out does anyone buy a lottery ticket and give their name and address?

I filed my own return, a few minutes later I received the confirmation email from HMRC, followed by a very realistic looking scam email about 30 seconds later.

A friend of mine fell for a paypal "confirm your credentials email" that came through within seconds of him making a paypal purchase.  If you send out enough of these things you will get some with fortuitous timing.

... and there are always really gullible people out there !

One of my clients was phoned by hmrc on saturday morning, twice, by the collections office. They were effectively bullied into paying the tax due by credit card, for which there was an additional fee of £8, as otherwise "interest would be charged". Then they phoned me. I immediately said this could well be a scam and they should try to cancel the payment with the credit card company, as I have never heard of hmrc behaving in this way before, on a saturday. Incidentally, no demand and giroslip had been sent to my client. The interest, I calculate, would have been about 5p per day - but no mention was made of this.

The whole affair cost me my saturday morning trying to verify the whole thing. The client was stupid to give anyone phoning them bank/cc details and HMRC should have told her to pay online, as they had last year. The client also expects me to complain to HMRC in writing, since they won't accept my concerns over the phone, and try to get their £8 back!

Stupid HMRC - anyone could have been on that phone and hit pay dirt. Stupid client with unrealistic expectations who calls me AFTER they have potentially shot themselves in the foot!!

I received emails purporting to be from HRMC concerning False claim investigation. i was invited to click on a link, which i ignored.

I looked on the HMRC site for a Contact address and advised them that they they should be aware of this.

i received a reply saying that it was not the concern of that department and I should try elswhere.

I tought this'couldn't care less response' was surprising but i had no intnetion of chasing from pillar to post if they could not be bothered..

A Gray