Government Legal Department (GLD) fraudulent calls

First occurence: August 2020

Format: Telephone

Members have confirmed this scam has attempted to take money from their business under the guise of official UK Government departments.

Details:

The IGA is aware that the Government Legal Department (GLD) general enquiry number (020 7210 8500) is being used by fraudsters to try and extract money from members of the public. Some members have reported another telephone number, 0161 984 9305, being used as an alternative.

In most of the reported cases, the fraudsters claim they are calling from GLD or HMRC, with the GLD enquiry line number showing in the caller ID. They are usually very aggressive on the phone, threatening members of the public that if they do not pay a certain amount of money, the police will arrest them. These calls are not being made by GLD or HMRC.

GLD will never call you from its enquiry line number, never ask you for your bank details or to pay money over the phone. If you receive a call of the type described above, please hang up and call Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 immediately.

Report Scam:

To report a scam to the UK authorities, please call Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or fill in an online report via their website here. When making your report, please ask for it to be associated with report reference NFRC200803859141.

You can forward suspicious emails claiming to be from HMRC to phishing@hmrc.gov.uk and texts to 60599.

If you believe this has happened to you please contact us via our direct membership helpline number on 01788 225 908, or email us at enquiries@rmif.co.uk so we can make other members aware of what is happening.