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Posted

Got a tax rebate notice yesterday for £1999. Phoned the IR as I hadn't done my tax return for 08/09 and I also didn't recognise the bank account no or sort code. All I got off them was the payment has been stopped anyway , but it was done after submission of your 08/09 tax return and they couldn't check anything else cos their system would be down for 2 weeks!!!!!WTF!!!!!!!

My brother phoned me today to warn me that he had also got this notice of a £1999 refund despiye not having done his tax return. Apparently the IR don't check any refunds under £2k , my brother had phoned his accountant (which we share) and he said either his system was hacked or its the IR but someone has got hold of all the bank and personal details etc and submitted bogus tax returns sending the money to newly opened accounts and then moving it to offshore accounts.

I will be going to take a look at my accountants system on Monday but was just wondering whether any other self employed UK hak5'ers had had similar experience???

Really am very *****ed off with this and want to know exactly what personal info there hackers have got. Also its unbelievable the IR has its com[puter system for maintenance for 2 weeks just at the time this has happened!!!!!

Posted

OK - bit of an update on this. My accountant has also spoken to the inland revenue about this because he also had a pile of letters from them for all his clients informing him of the £1999 rebate. The IR apparently however are stonewalling and making no comment - the police also were disinterested when he phoned them.

As far as the IR system being down for 2 weeks - I don't believe it - I know how much stink it causes at some multinationals when downtime is as little as 1 to 3 hours so for a major vital government department its pie in the sky. According to my accountant the online access to client files at the IR is still operating. AS it is the security on the online access to these accounts is pretty pathetic anyway.

With regards to this scam - the accountant is working his way through his client list and it seems separate accounts have been opened for each and every client with Barclays, some have already had the rebate paid into the account and some haven't. From the lack of response from the IR and the dodgy "computer system down for 2 weeks due to maintenance blah blah blah......" recorded and verbal message I think this is alot bigger than just the clients of one accountant , IMHO something has gone awry with the revenue computer records.

The opening of so many bank accounts also points to online account applications so the perpetrators obviously have my and others personal details in order to do this. I've checked all my accounts and so far everytinhg seems ok.

Serious;y if I don't get some answers off the IR soon I will be going to the press with this.

Posted

The police are not interested because as far as I know, there is currently no department which deals with online crime again. We had a unit, it got merged into SOC, they didn't want to do it so it stopped. We created another unit and then recently they lost all funding.

I wouldn't compare multinationals to civil servants, they are completely different. 2 week downtime is very very plausible, especially with the exceptionally poor management and the large multinationals hiring all the smart people.

If it's much bigger than you are saying, I would expect the press to be picking up on it, at any rate it'll be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Posted
The police are not interested because as far as I know, there is currently no department which deals with online crime again. We had a unit, it got merged into SOC, they didn't want to do it so it stopped. We created another unit and then recently they lost all funding.

I wouldn't compare multinationals to civil servants, they are completely different. 2 week downtime is very very plausible, especially with the exceptionally poor management and the large multinationals hiring all the smart people.

If it's much bigger than you are saying, I would expect the press to be picking up on it, at any rate it'll be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Most big city police forces have a computer crime unit however they are always tied up looking for indecent images on hundreds of hardrives rather than takling anything else. The head of the computer crime unit for my local force said they spent 90% of their time on pedophilia cases.

Posted
Most big city police forces have a computer crime unit however they are always tied up looking for indecent images on hundreds of hardrives rather than takling anything else. The head of the computer crime unit for my local force said they spent 90% of their time on pedophilia cases.

Your right about the time for working on the system stingwray. Todays press carries a release about pleope who have actually made tax returns to reclaim amounts upto £9k after they had been put on emergency tax code having to wait 3 to 4 weeks because the inland revenue are putting all records onto one system. I wonder if this is all some bollocks up by them with bank account record fields being transposed or something alomg those lines when the DBs are merged ???

Posted
Most big city police forces have a computer crime unit however they are always tied up looking for indecent images on hundreds of hardrives rather than takling anything else. The head of the computer crime unit for my local force said they spent 90% of their time on pedophilia cases.

They aren't computer crime units by the sense that they deal with online crime, they deal with crimes which involve use of a computer, which given this is the information age is getting to be about nearly all crimes. As far as I am aware, there is no one currently designating with the job of handling online crime, the closest we have is GCHQ, but thats more like having a police department constantly watching CCTV footage all the time.

Your right about the time for working on the system stingwray. Todays press carries a release about pleope who have actually made tax returns to reclaim amounts upto £9k after they had been put on emergency tax code having to wait 3 to 4 weeks because the inland revenue are putting all records onto one system. I wonder if this is all some bollocks up by them with bank account record fields being transposed or something alomg those lines when the DBs are merged ???

You would hope that it wasn't something like that, but given the governments initiative to integrate every single system into one huge super database so that we can cut all the red-tape between departments thats most likely the cause. I wonder how long it will take to pay itself off? I hope you are enjoying the service that you are paying for!

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