HMRC’s Head of Cyber Security has asked us to share the below message. Details of the latest phishing scams and how to recognise genuine HMRC contact have also been published in addition to the August 2021 HMRC scams briefing and an updated list of recent letters and emails from HMRC to help decide if a letter is a scam.
“As we all know, online scams are widespread and numbers have risen during the past few years. HMRC has seen tax-related scams roughly double over the past year. I am writing to let you know that Mike Fell, HMRC’s Head of Cyber Security, has today written to Voluntary and Community Sector groups asking them to share our advice on fighting scams, and to forward that guidance to you.
In his letter to the VCS groups, Mike said:
These crimes often target the busy, unwary or vulnerable, but anyone can become a victim. The pandemic has given criminals a fresh hook for their activity and we’ve detected more than 460 Covid financial support scams alone since early 2020.
HMRC takes a proactive approach to protecting the public from tax-related scams and we have a dedicated Customer Protection Team that works continuously to identify and close them down.
We also encourage people to report HMRC-branded scams directly to us so that we can gather information to help us with that work.”
HMRC has also written to leading charities warning them that tax scams continue to rise and asking them to share cyber and phone scams advice with their communities. The message is as follows:
“We have seen tax-related scams roughly double during the past year. The pandemic has given criminals a fresh hook for their activity and we’ve detected more than 450 Covid financial support scams alone since early 2020.
The department encourages people to report HMRC branded scams directly to us so that we can gather information to help identify cyber and phone scams and close them down.
HMRC warns people to be careful if they are contacted out of the blue by someone asking for money or personal information. The department sees high numbers of fraudsters emailing, calling or texting people claiming to be from HMRC. If in doubt, we advise people not to reply directly to anything suspicious, but to contact the department straight away and check our guidance on GOV.UK.
HMRC also asks people to search GOV.UK for information on how to recognise genuine HMRC contact.
As part of our campaign to protect the public against HMRC-branded cyber and telephone scams, we have issued a release to media today focusing on the risk to university students as the academic year begins.
We’ve released new figures with this (below) and, as with our recent charity push, would be grateful for anything you can do to share our advice with your members and stakeholders, and their families. We encourage people to report HMRC-branded scams directly to us so that we can gather information to help us with that work.”
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