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UK Businesswoman Alerting Businesses about Scam E-mails

Sarah Moore, a caterer by profession, from Bridport (Dorset, England) has raised warning of a possible e-mail scam presently making rounds on the Internet, as reported by Bridportnews on October 16, 2010. Sarah had warned other businesses to be wary of this new e-mail scam.

Moore established a catering company called Moore-than-Enough 8 years back. Recently, she got an e-mail that appeared to come from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HM Revenue and Customs or HMRC) and assured her a tax reimbursement.

Moore stated that with all that had been in the news recently regarding the tax mix up was not unbelievable. According to her the e-mail included an HM Customs refund address and stated that she was due £350.80 and it would be directly transferred into her bank account, as reported by Bridportnews on October 16, 2010.

She further stated that she got suspicious when the e-mail asked to furnish her bank details.

Moore immediately contacted the HMRC and the HMRC Officials asked her to forward the e-mail to them so they could further investigate about the issue.

After complete investigation the HMRC officials declared the mail to be a complete scam.

Commenting on the issue, security experts stated that she had sent her bank information and details to the senders of the scam e-mail. Thus, the possibilities of having her bank accounts completely empty would have been more. Besides, she would be victimized of identity theft.

HMRC Officials again cautioned taxpayers that they never use telephone calls, e-mails or any other external technique to contact their customers under any circumstances, rather they always contact taxpayers via post.

Hence, officials suggested taxpayers to immediately forward such kind of e-mails to them at phishing@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk for further investigation and then delete it from their systems. Officials also advised taxpaying individuals or customers to not get tempted by the appealing content of these scam e-mails.

Conclusively, tax refund scam e-mails are not just restricted to the UK. As a matter of fact, these scam e-mails appear to be part of a larger worldwide scam. Similar fraud e-mails pretending to be from Inland Revenue Department (IRD) are supposedly prevalent in New Zealand. Besides, these kinds of e-mails pretending to be from Internal Revenue Service in the US have been reported lately.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 10/21/2010

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