The scam involves a telephone call from someone claiming to be from the Ministry of Justice or other government department. The target person is typically told that they are eligible to receive payments such as the repayment of bank charges, tax, fraud, debts or any other charges.

Targets are asked to give personal information, such as date of birth, address, bank details, passport ID etc. Then they are asked to make payments using untraceable methods such as Western Union or by gift card.

This should ring alarm bells for the targets but many pay up even when asked to pay in UKash vouchers or PaysafeCard.

These callers have no connection with the Ministry of Justice, or other parts of government.

They seek your personal data in order to sell the details to other criminals por to engage in identity theft.

If you have been a victim and paid money via the Ukash voucher scheme, contact UKash immediately on 0808 234 6244 (open 24 hours) to see if the payment can be blocked. For further information see the warnings on the Ukash website.

If you have been a victim and paid money via Paysafecard, contact the company immediately on 0845 021 3059 (open 24 hours) to see if the payment can be blocked. For further information see the Paysafecard website.

The Ministry of Justice takes seriously any attempt to misappropriate its identity or that of its agencies, associated offices and official logo’s and will investigate any such incidents of misuse and take appropriate action where necessary.

Any correspondence, like letters or emails apparently from the Ministry of Justice that request private information, should be treated with extreme caution. If you have any doubts about the authenticity of such communications, please contact Ministry of Justice on 020 3334 3555 or online.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-wasters do let me know, by email.