As part of Scam Awareness Month, concerning information has surfaced, stating that HMRC has saved the public £2.4M by stopping fraudsters scamming citizens by re-directing their phone calls.

Scammers have been creating websites which are almost identical to the official HMRC site, then displaying phone numbers which encourage members of the public to call, unbeknown to them that costs are sky high and not in any way official. This is opposed to HMRC’s low cost and no cost rates.
If you are looking for a HMRC number, note that HMRC own numbers that start with 0300, which are free of charge, or charge the standard UK landline rate.

Thankfully, HMRC have challenged these scam websites and had them removed from the internet, saving customers a considerable amount of money and the stress of the situation. Research and analysis has shown that HMRC has prevented the fraudsters from scamming the public of and overall total of £2.4M from their back pockets.

Key Information
In 2017, HMRC started to deny scammers from taking ownership of other domain sites. So far, a total of 105 domains have been recovered, all which were being used to scam members of the public.

On average, each victim was scammed of around £15 per call, with the maximum cost of a call being £3.60 a minute and being capped at £36.

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