ossie1971
15-06-2005, 06:33 PM
Hi
having been reading through this forum for a good few weeks now I have suddenly found myself with a weird situation I could use a little advice on if you can spare me a few minutes.
At around 2.30 this afternoon my wife received a phone call from a man identifying himself as Andrew *** from the inland revenue. He stated that he was from the cardiff office and was looking in to a P46 that had landed on his desk, in my name but with the name of my employer missing. He asked my wife to confirm my date of birth & employers name, he also said that as he had no number listed for us he had rung directory enquiries - he managed to obtain our number even though the phone is not in my name but my wifes. Now usually she is one of the most intelligent people I know but by her own admission she had a "brain fart" and confirmed the details. The guy then left a phone number and an extension with a message to call him at the earliest opportunity.
The message was passed on and I spoke to our accounts dept who just looked blankly at me, so I rang the number, only to receive a recorded message saying HMRC had changed their number and issuing another.
I eventually got through to a call centre in cardiff who checked my file and found no indication that someone needed to be in contact with me. I was also told that their SOP in an instance like this is to purely leave a name/ number and leave it at that. She also stated that although the number given would have been correct until quite recently, the extension number didn't exist.
I asked if they could make a log of my call in case it was a genuine situation and they had got the YTS lad to sort it out.
I got home from work around 4.30 and at about 5 o clock the phone rang again, I answer and a man (welsh accent as described by my wife) identified himself as Andrew **** from the cardiff office of the inland revenue.
I said I was busy & could I take a number and give him a call back he said that would be fine & immediately hung up.
I was a little bewildered, but after thinking about things for a few minutes rang my local police station to make a report - I had a feeling that impersonating a tax officer was illegal.
Anyway the report was made, I was given a log number and told that the information would be passed to intelligence. I then spoke to NTL to ask for a list of incoming calls for today (The phone line he called on has only been active around 2 months and these are the only called we've received on it this month) But was referred to their fraud unit which had closed for the day.
I was told by HMRC & the local nick that this was a common tactic for debt collectors / insurance agents to confirm where we live but;
a) I'm 99.9% certain we don't owe anyone any money &
b) Having confirmed the details with my wife why ring back again later.
c) We have no insurance claims going through nor have we in the past 10 years or so.
In short this has been reported in full to the local police & to a lesser degree to HMRC. I will be contacting the fraud office of NTL tomorrow to make them aware of this as well.
which leads me to 3 questions
1) Is it possible to get a copy of withheld incoming numbers to my number
2) Is there anyone else I should inform that there is a pillock out there pretending he is a tax inspector
3) Any advice for dealing with him if he is dumb enough to call again
Thanks for taking the time to read this rather long winded post
ossie
PS fantastic forum, My workrate has gone downhill drastically since I discovered it
having been reading through this forum for a good few weeks now I have suddenly found myself with a weird situation I could use a little advice on if you can spare me a few minutes.
At around 2.30 this afternoon my wife received a phone call from a man identifying himself as Andrew *** from the inland revenue. He stated that he was from the cardiff office and was looking in to a P46 that had landed on his desk, in my name but with the name of my employer missing. He asked my wife to confirm my date of birth & employers name, he also said that as he had no number listed for us he had rung directory enquiries - he managed to obtain our number even though the phone is not in my name but my wifes. Now usually she is one of the most intelligent people I know but by her own admission she had a "brain fart" and confirmed the details. The guy then left a phone number and an extension with a message to call him at the earliest opportunity.
The message was passed on and I spoke to our accounts dept who just looked blankly at me, so I rang the number, only to receive a recorded message saying HMRC had changed their number and issuing another.
I eventually got through to a call centre in cardiff who checked my file and found no indication that someone needed to be in contact with me. I was also told that their SOP in an instance like this is to purely leave a name/ number and leave it at that. She also stated that although the number given would have been correct until quite recently, the extension number didn't exist.
I asked if they could make a log of my call in case it was a genuine situation and they had got the YTS lad to sort it out.
I got home from work around 4.30 and at about 5 o clock the phone rang again, I answer and a man (welsh accent as described by my wife) identified himself as Andrew **** from the cardiff office of the inland revenue.
I said I was busy & could I take a number and give him a call back he said that would be fine & immediately hung up.
I was a little bewildered, but after thinking about things for a few minutes rang my local police station to make a report - I had a feeling that impersonating a tax officer was illegal.
Anyway the report was made, I was given a log number and told that the information would be passed to intelligence. I then spoke to NTL to ask for a list of incoming calls for today (The phone line he called on has only been active around 2 months and these are the only called we've received on it this month) But was referred to their fraud unit which had closed for the day.
I was told by HMRC & the local nick that this was a common tactic for debt collectors / insurance agents to confirm where we live but;
a) I'm 99.9% certain we don't owe anyone any money &
b) Having confirmed the details with my wife why ring back again later.
c) We have no insurance claims going through nor have we in the past 10 years or so.
In short this has been reported in full to the local police & to a lesser degree to HMRC. I will be contacting the fraud office of NTL tomorrow to make them aware of this as well.
which leads me to 3 questions
1) Is it possible to get a copy of withheld incoming numbers to my number
2) Is there anyone else I should inform that there is a pillock out there pretending he is a tax inspector
3) Any advice for dealing with him if he is dumb enough to call again
Thanks for taking the time to read this rather long winded post
ossie
PS fantastic forum, My workrate has gone downhill drastically since I discovered it