On Friday I was tricked by the HMRC tax fraud scam and lost £7,000. I contacted Monzo straight away and have gone through all the Monzo procedures. What I am concerned about is if I gave enough evidence to Monzo for them to refund my money. I was able to send them screenshots of the call log, a Whatsapp message from the scammers and answers to 7 questions about the scam from Monzo. But is this enough? Did I answer the questions in enough detail (one or two sentences per question)? And is it too late to provide further evidence? Such as I hadn’t mentioned that they were also pretending to be the Ministry of Justice, using their phone number…
From the other threads where this has happened, Monzo will come back to you if they want more info on something. So try not to worry yourself, if you’ve given all that you can remember for now then sit tight and see what Monzo say.
If you think you could have given them more evidence and you have it, then you absolutely should give it to them. If you don’t have anymore to give then there’s nothing more you can do than wait for the outcome.
They make you lookup the number of some high court or some legal authority on the legitimate government website, and then call back while spoofing that number to make it look like they’re really there. As we can see here it’s an effective tactic.
Sorry, i think i managed to delete my original reply whilst trying to edit it, here it is again:
Well, the main reason I fell for it is because I had just done my first ever tax return this year myself, so I believed them when they said there was a few errors. They then passed me to someone from the Ministry of Justice, using their phone number (Which I checked when I received a call from them ‘02033343555’) They then told me, because of this unpaid tax, there was an arrest warrant for tax fraud against me and to remove it I needed to pay. I asked the person for some identification, and they told me there badge number and name which sounded legitimate, followed by them shouting at me not to waste time as I could be arrested at any minute. I was then told as soon as I pay and the arrest warrant is removed, the money pay would be refunded instantly. They then said the ministry of justice declined the removal of the first offence as there were 5 other arrest warrants which needed to be paid before I could clear my name and get my money back. So I paid . They then said I needed to pay for the paperwork to be sent to the Ministry of Justice, the police and myself. This is when I thought something was up and I asked for them to give me back my money and I was promised if I paid for the paperwork I would receive all of it back. I did not receive any money back.
The reason I still paid the money, even though there were warnings, was A: I was panicking and just wanted the arrest warrant to be removed and B: The scammer said that this was just an error with my bank and that it usually happens to people when paying HMRC. It also didn’t help that the same warning popped up only a few days ago when I paid a friend.
There’s no harm in adding additional context if you think it is useful.
The best advice I can say, is make to write up a clear concise timeline of events; covering who contacted you, how they persuaded you, and why you thought they were legitimate.
Key focus should be to demonstrate why it felt legit.
So happy for you! My younger brother has had this happen and has put forward a case so it gives us more hope for a full refund - Also thanks for sharing your experience
No worries, let me know if you have any other questions! Also i’d advise a read of this document to get to know the APP code Monzo abides by (especially R2 on pg12)
