Action Fraud, part of Gwent Police Cyber Crime Team, has received further reports of fake HMRC emails and calls which mimic the Royal Courts of Justice phone number.

There are several variations of the scam including;

*Offerings of financial support such as a tax rebate as a result of Covid-19

*An alleged penalty

The caller will then ask you to confirm your personal or financial information. Never give this information out to people you don’t know say police.

And as scammers get more sophisticated they are asking people to use telephone numbers which can be ’spoofed’ to appear to originate from a genuine UK number.

This now means that telephone numbers cannot be trusted as a way of verifying the caller.

Within the email version of the scam, there is a web link which leads to a genuine looking HMRC website.

Advice from the team is

Never click on web links or attachments from emails.

Do not give out your personal or financial information.

Verify using your own trusted method.