The Chancellor yesterday pledged to crack down on telephone fraud after the Mail exposed a fake taxman scam targeting 10,000 Britons a day.
Philip Hammond said that no one should have to endure such ‘fear and intimidation’ in their own home.
Pauline Howe, 64, was targeted after the death of her mother, when she was at her most vulnerable – and was scammed out of almost £19,000 while Martina Zvirinska, 29, lost almost £2,000 after being targeted by the 'vile' scammers last week.
Miss Zvirinska, 29, who runs her own personal training business, said she was reduced to tears on the phone after being threatened with immediate arrest if she refused to pay what they were asking for.
We had revealed how criminals posing as HMRC officials select victims from the BT online phone directory and threaten them with jail unless they repay non-existent tax debts.
Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond is seen outside Downing Street ahead of a Brexit vote in London
Mr Hammond tweeted a copy of yesterday’s Mail front page about the swindlers, who pocket £1million a year from UK residents while operating from Ahmedabad in India.
And he promised to do more to stop the scammers using special software to buy British phone numbers – and even copying the HMRC phone number – to make their fraud appear genuine. Mr Hammond said the Government planned to remove phone lines used in scams as soon as possible, with 450 numbers already closed down and more to come.
Mel Stride, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, also pledged to bring fraudsters to justice wherever they operate.
He said: ‘These scammers think they can get away with it because they are calling from overseas. But they should think again: my message to them is that wherever you are, we will find you and put an end to your grubby schemes.’
Grab from undercover footage from an Indian call centre where scammers posing as HMRC officials terrorise thousands of Britons a day by claiming they are being prosecuted for non-payment of tax
However, the pledge got off to a slow start after it emerged that UK police were yet to contact officers in Ahmedabad about the HMRC fraud gang. Police in the city have started an investigation – but only after the Mail contacted them directly ahead of publication with a dossier of details about the scammers.
Undercover Mail reporters infiltrated the 18-strong gang at its fake call centre in Ahmedabad. The fraudsters, who boasted they did not fear being tracked down by British authorities, select victims at random from the online BT phone directory. Following a script, they warn about impending court proceedings for unpaid tax and demand immediate payment.
Targets are told they face arrest and imprisonment if they do not pay immediately. HMRC received 60,000 reports of landline repayment fraud cases in the six months to January – 360 per cent up on the previous half-year. However, not all the victims will have come forward. More than one in ten frauds reported in the UK involves Indian call centres and over half originate abroad, according to Action Fraud, the national fraud and cyber reporting centre.
Former Met Police fraud investigator James Mills said: ‘Britons are sitting ducks for foreign-based fraudsters. It’s hard work and very time-consuming to investigate scam call centres overseas which are hard to trace.
‘There’s a lot of bureaucracy to get access to these places and there isn’t the appetite or the resource to do it. Sadly, saying the money has gone overseas is often used as an excuse for closing a fraud inquiry.
‘For fraudsters it’s a dream. The rewards are very high and risks are very low.’ Mr Mills, who now runs his own fraud investigation company Requite Solutions, said: ‘It’s not treated as a priority, despite the huge number of victims. Just because it’s hard to do doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try. It can be done if there’s enough effort.’
Gareth Shaw of Which? said: ‘Our analysis shows more than nine in ten cases reported to Action Fraud currently go unsolved.’ An HMRC spokesman said last night: ‘[We] will only ever call you asking for payment on a debt that you are already aware of, either having received a letter about it, or after you’ve told us you owe some tax.’
So vulnerable after my mother's death, that I let scammers con me out of £19,000By Samantha Partington
A school librarian lost almost £19,000 to call centre scammers after being kept on the phone for five hours and repeatedly threatened with arrest.
Pauline Howe, 64, was targeted after the death of her mother, when she was at her most vulnerable – and much of the money stolen was from her inheritance.
Her nightmare began in October last year when she received a voice message from a woman calling herself Claire Williams – who claimed to be from HMRC – saying it was urgent that she call the 0203 number back.
Mrs Howe immediately returned the call and spoke to a man, Michael Carter, who said HMRC had noticed a discrepancy of £5,000 on her account. He claimed she had violated HMRC’s code, caused wilful misrepresentation, theft by deception, tax fraud and tax evasion. He also said they had frozen her driving licence, passport and national insurance number and had a warrant out for her arrest.
Pauline Howe, 64, was targeted after the death of her mother, when she was at her most vulnerable - losing £19,000
She was told the breach had occurred between 2012 and 2016, but that if she paid the debt off immediately, nothing would happen to her.
Mrs Howe, who has been completing an online tax return since 2010 for a property that she rents, feared she had submitted her return incorrectly.
She said she would have to do it when she finished work and called the real HMRC on her landline when she returned home that afternoon at around 3.30pm. She was kept on hold and, while on the line, her mobile rang. Unbeknown to her, it was the fraudsters calling.
She hung up on the real HMRC, and took the call on her mobile. It was ‘Michael Carter’ on the line.
Mrs Howe said: ‘He could tell I was anxious and he spoke reassuringly to me and said: “Don’t worry it will be okay.” He was very compassionate and whenever I had a question he would say: “You don’t need to worry about that.”’
She added: ‘I was told to go to the HMRC website on my laptop. They guided me through several pages on HMRC’s website, seeming really knowledgeable, and took me to a page that had a box in it which said ‘enter reference’.
‘They said that once I had paid, I would be given a reference and that would allow me to make an appointment with my local HMRC office.’
The fraudster told Mrs Howe to go to her online banking page and gave her a sort code and account number for a Prepaid Financial Services account into which she was told to transfer £1,900. She was told to put her own name into the payee box in capitals and said: ‘I felt secure knowing I was paying myself.’
The money left her account, but the fraudster insisted he hadn’t received it. She sent the transfer again, and was met with the same response. When she argued with
