Ministry of Justice warning over another scam

December 10, 2009 by admin  
Filed under News, News-Banking

The Ministry of Justice has recently issued a warning over another scam that has been used to dupe many consumers in the UK and swindle them out of large sums of money. According to the MoJ fraudsters are cold calling consumers and pretending to be government officials.

These criminals are taking advantage of the difficult financial situation that many people are in, and with a false promise of being able to ease their financial situations are actually taking considerable sums of money from them.

The criminals are posing as employees of either the Ministry of Justice or the Office of Fair Trading, and when they cold call unsuspecting consumers they explain that they can clear their debts for them or can help them to retrieve bank charges and similar charges. They then ask the consumers for upfront payments to do this, and with many consumers falling for the scam they have made a fortune.

The Justice Minister Bridgit Prentice described these fraudsters as despicable for causing more distress and financial strain for consumers that are clearly already struggling financially.

Authorities have confirmed that the Office of Fair Trading and the Ministry of Justice would never ask for any payment details from consumers. With a huge number of claims management firms having come into operation over recent years many consumers may find it difficult to differentiate between the bona fide firm and a scam call, which is something that is also helping the fraudsters to enjoy huge success from this scam.

Over recent years the number of scams that have been targeted towards consumers has increased, with many of these scams involving phone calls where the caller pretends to be from a government body or bank in order to try and get account details from consumers.

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