‘The false sheriffs said they would take my furniture’

A man has described how criminals who intend to be a sheriffs almost cheated him to pay thousands of pounds to resolve a fictional debt as part of an elaborate scam.

In what It has been reported As a growing problem, people are called by phone and told him that the sheriffs are on their way to their home to eliminate their possessions and that the only way to cancel them is to resolve the debt with a local court.

A convincing falsification of the Court’s telephone service tries to take the payment with the criminals in the hope that the panic of the sheriffs who approach them persuade them to separate from their cash.

Paul, from Northumberland, said BBC Radio 4’s You and yours He started with a phone call from nothing.

‘Amazed and terrified’

“I replied the call and then proceeded to say that it was a sheriff and that it was playing because there had been a sentence of the Court Court against me the previous summer in Worcester Crown Court and owed £ 2,950 plus its rate of £ 970”. said.

Then they told him: “‘The boys and I will come later today to collect furniture from his house at the value of the finding.”

The man on the phone told Paul, who rents holiday cabins on his farm, the debt related to unpaid social media marketing rates.

“I was amazed and terrified, actually, at the same time,” he said.

The man gave Paul a number to contact the Court for more details.

Although the number was false, Paul met the genuine automated message of the court, that the criminals had doubled to make the scam more convincing.

When they took him to someone, they told Paul that he had unpaid “marketing expenses.”

Then he received what seemed genuine judicial documents by email, which have been shared with the BBC, which details the debts that had apparently accumulated.

Paul was asked to transfer the money to the personal bank account of a “advisor designated by the court” who worked as a freelancer.

“At this point, the alarm bells sounded strong and clear,” he said.

Then, Paul looked online the correct contact number for the court, and realized that the one they had given him was wrong, just as another email requested the payment, from an email address Dot Com little likely.

“In all this, through all this, I still receive phone calls from the alleged sheriff who wants me to tell me that he had sent the money,” he said.

“He said not until the money has been sent, he canceled the action of the boys with the fists that would come and steal all my furniture.”

‘Panic mode’

Victoria, who lives in Cheshire, was also attacked with the scam.

When his phone rang, they told him that the “compliance agents” were 40 minutes and came to remove the articles from his house.

“I went into panic mode,” he said.

The man told him that he could not discuss the details by phone, but he would give him the details of the Chester County Court to those who could ask for an explanation.

“I was talking on the phone for years,” Victoria said.

“I couldn’t pass. So, because I couldn’t pass and the sheriff was on the way, he was panic even more.”

She said she could communicate with another man, also a scammer, who told her that she had accumulated debt through Google Advertising, and as she remembered having spoken with Google several years ago, this seemed plausible.

Victoria, who works for a funeral business, had never bought Google’s advertising, but the man told him that he had used a free test and did not cancel it.

Victoria was told that he should have appeared in court and that there was an arrest warrant.

“I just wanted to send the money there and then,” he said.

“While I was on my computer setting him, another sheriff called me and he was on his way and he was the unpleasant sheriff, he was the horrible sheriff.

“I was just saying that I was now 10 minutes and that the property was clearing and making the bank’s transfer as soon as possible.”

When establishing the payment of her online bank, her husband had searched online the correct number for the court and called it, but it was number 30 in the tail.

“I was leaving the room saying that I would never talk to me again if I sent the money,” he said.

“And I just wanted to stop the bailiffs.”

A warning about the Victoria online bank that the details they had given were for a personal account, not a business, planted the first seeds of doubt in their mind, just like her husband arrived at the genuine court that told them They will not pay.

‘Punta del Iceberg’

It was a close fault for both Paul and Victoria.

“They almost had me,” Paul said.

“You enter a shock mode where you are really not thinking terribly clearly.

“And there was also enough plausibility in some of that because they affirmed that I had not been able to pay the marketing expenses for the holiday cabin business that I really run. And they had hidden in my mobile phone number and knew my name.

“There were some question signs in which it felt as if it could have been real, enough to terrorize me …”

The Ministry of Justice said it was a criminal offense to impersonate a sheriff, and that anyone who receives a similar call must hang and find the correct number for the court.

Sarah Naylor, from the Sheriffs Commercial Agency, the Civil Control Association, said there had been an increase in the number of reports that its organization received about these tactics, and that it was probably the tip of the iceberg, since few Victims would plan to notify the genuine bailiffs after being scammed.

“These scam companies work on the basis of urgency and fear,” he said.

Genuine application agents will always reprogram and allow people to verify the details, he said, and will never only offer a payment option.

“Breathe and reflect,” he advised anyone who received a similar call.

“Is this right? Is this the first time you have heard about that? Does it seem suspicious? Keep calm and understand more about the debt and if that individual does not help you with that, then it is very likely that they are not a Legitimate compliance agent “.