RECEIVING SOME ‘PHONE CALLS CAN BE CRIMINAL

What would you do if your ‘phone rang and before you can say, “We don’t want any double-glazing and your name isn’t Cledwyn Jenkins because you’re calling from Mumbai”, a sinister-sounding automatic voice tells you . . .

“This is HMRC. We have been trying to contact you.  We are about to issue a lawsuit against you.”

Well, the first thing most of us would do is find out what telephone number had called.

That’s exactly what a friend of mine did when he received such a call last week and discovered he’d been telephoned from area code 0203.

Knowing that his tax matters were up to date, that the HMRC never ‘phone individuals and they’d definitely not been trying to get in touch with him because his address and home ‘phone number haven’t changed for 30 years, he suspected this was a new form of scam.

When he checked online on the internet to see if anyone else had received similar calls, he found that thousands of people all over the UK have had them.

They come from criminal organisations who want your hard-earned cash.

This is how the scam works . . .

If you fall for their con and phone them back – but please don’t! –  you’ll speak to an ‘HMRC official’, otherwise known as a crook, a thief, a rogue and far worse descriptions than I can write in a family newspaper.

You’ll be asked for your bank account details and told they’ll take out what you owe.

Do not give them your account details and end the call. Otherwise they will rob your account of every penny.

If you receive such a call, ignore their threat to ‘Take out a lawsuit against you’.

They can’t.

But what we can do is find out where they’re based and threaten them with a prison sentence!

Form an orderly queue . . .