Don’t get caught out by Bob! HMRC Tax Return email scam

UK Tax Return email scam.

BEWARE! The Tax Return email scams have started already, just a day after the 31st January 2018 deadline. These fraudsters are certainly quick off the mark.

Below you can see the text from an email I received today. Note the way these fraudsters don’t even know my name, whereas the real HMRC certainly would. The sender of this UK Tax Return email scam was showing as ‘HMRC Business Help and Support Emails’.

Dear tax payer,

 

REF: Notification of payment collection

 

Please find attached your final statement of liability which confirms the payment we are arranging to collect now.

 

Please note that this statement is for reconciliation purposes ONLY; dispute period is now over and we are not able to make any late amends to this statement nor amend the payment we are about to collect.

 

Please note that failure to make timely payments could result in additional assessment and may charge you interest.

This scam email came from a domain name ending in .top, which was registered on 9th January 2018 by a guy called Bob, whose address is showing as being in Leicestershire, UK. I’m not going to show the domain here, as it has either a virus or malware in it.

A domain name ending in .top is a generic Top Level Domain that’s freely accessible for anyone to register for a low fee. Because it’s a generic domain name, most sites that use this domain are spam sites/advertisement sites. No surprise there!

The original email also had a Word document attachment.

Whether or not ‘Bob’ is real registrant of that domain or not, I will be reporting him to the relevant people.

Make sure you don’t get caught out by Bob!