Phone scams reported to HMRC fall in Scotland

20th July 2022

Phone scam reports have fallen by 84 pent cent in Scotland over the last year, new regional data from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has revealed.

In the Scotland, 384 phone scams were reported to HMRC in June this year compared to 2432 in June 2021.

People aged between 25 and 34 appear to be most affected by scams in the region, with 94 reporting phone scams in Scotland in June.
 
HMRC has made significant efforts to tackle the problem and protect the public. Scam call reports
from across all regions peaked in March 2021 with almost 76,000 reports. This was slashed to just over 5,000 in March this year.  
 
To fight phone scams, HMRC has worked with the telecoms industry and Ofcom to stop HMRC's helpline numbers from being spoofed by fraudsters, who can no longer appear to be calling from an HMRC number. HMRC also has a dedicated customer protection team working on cyber and phone phishing scams around the clock. 
 
The drop in reported phone scams is a testament to the work of teams across HMRC in tackling fraud. HMRC's phishing referral tools and innovative technology all play a part in the department's
efforts to combat fraud, which has resulted in fewer people falling victim to and reporting tax scams.  
 
Kelly Paterson, HMRC’s Chief Information and Security Officer, said, "We work tirelessly to tackle scams and protect hard-working taxpayers from becoming victims of fraud. 
 
"Never let yourself be rushed. If someone contacts you saying that they are from HMRC, wanting you to urgently transfer money or give personal information, be on your guard. HMRC will never ring
out of the blue threatening arrest. 
 
"To help us fight these crimes, forward suspicious texts claiming to be from HMRC to 60599 and
emails to phishing@hmrc.gov.uk. Report tax scam phone calls to us on GOV.UK." 
 
HMRC received over 212,500 reports in total of all kinds of scams, by email, text message and phone, over the past year, nationally. 

Phone scammers often call people threatening immediate arrest for fictitious tax owed.  Sometimes they claim that the victim’s National Insurance number has been used in a fraud or offer a fake tax
rebate as a way of stealing personal and banking information.   
 
In addition to warning the public about phishing scams, HMRC urges people never to share their HMRC login details. Criminals using the logins could steal from the customer or make a fraudulent
claim in their name.

Nationally, in the last year (July 21 - June 22) HMRC has:
· responded to 212,516 referrals of suspicious contact from the public. Some 102,873 of these offered bogus tax rebates

· worked with the telecoms industry and Ofcom to remove 67 phone numbers being used to commit HMRC-related phone scams

· responded to 57,386 reports of phone scams in total, 88% down on the previous year. In April 2020 we received reports of only 425 phone scams. In June 2022 this had risen to 5,696

· reported 5,974 malicious web pages for takedown

· detected 463 Covid-related financial scams since March 2020, most by text message

· asked Internet Service Providers to take down 443 Covid-related scam web pages.