Tuesday 24 March 2009

BT Phone Scam

The Council’s press team have flagged up details of the following scam been attempted by person’s unknown over the phone :

"On Saturday 21 March at 7pm, High Peak Councillor, Mike Harrison was contacted by telephone by a man claiming to be from British Telecom (BT). They claimed that he had cancelled his standing orders, that his account was in arrears and that letters detailing this had been sent on various occasions to his address. The caller said that if he didn't pay some of his outstanding debt immediately then he could be in serious trouble.

Councillor Harrison knew that his account was not in arrears and that potentially this was a scam and firmly told the caller that he would need to double-check this with BT first before he proceeded any further.

Earlier today, Cllr Harrison contacted BT who confirmed that his account was in order, they have never sent him any correspondence and that he had no outstanding debt.

Please could you notify your family and friends of this scam, particularly those who are elderly or vulnerable who may feel pressured into handing over their money, credit card details or bank details."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

good grief!!
we definately need these warnings in this day & age.

>anne :-)

Anonymous said...

I also received one of these calls on Monday night (27/04/09), and phoned BT after to check account - it was fine. I phoned the police to report and they said that it was good I didn't give any details over the phone to this man. This hasn't been very well publicised though - I found very few news articles about this particular scam on the net.
- Libby