Over the last couple of days, I’ve been on the trail of a particular nasty and elaborate premium rate telephone/callback scam which deliberately targets parents on low incomes.

The fraudsters are promoting a premium rate telephone service as a ‘Child Benefit Hotline’ and using a callback service regulated by PhonePayPlus, on the same number, to bill telephone users £1.50 simply for answering a call and listening to the phone ring at the other end.

The same scammers have also succeeded in placing false information onto at least two school websites in an effort to con parents who are looking to take advantage of a government-funded scheme to get low income families online into calling their fake hotline number.

The number used by the scammer is 0904 1690075, calls to which cost a flat £1.5o per call.

There are two different elements to the scam.

One is a relatively straightforward callback scam in which telephone users receive an unsolicited call which, when answered, leaves them listening to ringing tone while being entirely unaware that they are being charged £1.50 per minute simply for answering the call. Any attempt to identify the caller using BT’s 1471 service returns only a caller’s number withheld message and it is only when the user receives their phone bill that they become aware that they’ve been charged for ‘accessing’ a premium rate service.

The second, and in some respects more worrying side to the scam, involves the hacking of genuine to school websites to insert false information promoting fraudulent  ‘hotline’ number  alongside information promoting the government-funded Home Access Grant scheme, through which low income families in receipt that are without internet access and in receipt of specific welfare benefits can obtain a free laptop computer and 12 months internet access to support their children’s learning.

Both of the schools targeted by the scammers, the Michael Faraday Primary School and the City of London Academy, Southwark, use open source software (WordPress and Joomla) to publish their websites, which suggests that both sites have been hacked by the scammers to add the same false information (in italics) to the pages promoting the genuine Home Access Grant Scheme, eg.

Parents can now apply for the Government’s FREE computer and FREE one year Internet access at home scheme.

To request a form, go to the Home Access helpline on 0333 200 1004. Please be patient, they are dealing with a lot or requests at the moment!

Parents need to include a range of documents when they return the application form.  One of the most important bits of evidence is the Child Benefit Award letter. If you have problems with this you can contact the Child Benefit helpline on 0904 1690075.

Not only is this scheme, which is due to come to end shortly, now restricted to applications from families with a disabled/SEN child but evidence of a child benefit award is not amongst the supporting evidence required to prove eligibility for the grant.

Both schools have now been contacted and advised to remove the false information from their sites.

If you are unfortuate to have been caught out by this scam, you should contact the regulator, PhonePayPlus, on 0800 500 212 to lodge a complaint.

According to their PhonePayPluss number checker the premium rate number used in this scam, 0904 1690075, is operated by a company called Customer Service Helplines, which is based in Arlesey, Bedfordshire. The company appears to be nothing more than a reseller that provides customer service contact numbers for a variety of companies and are, therefore, unlikely to unaware that their services are being exploited by scammers.

If you wish to complain to them directly, you can contact them here (webform).

UPDATE

One somewhat frustrating call to PhonePayPlus later and a bit more digging later and…

1. Despite reports of people being charged simply for answering calls from this number, including one guy who claims to have been charged £1.50 after his answerphone picked up the call, PhonePayPlus are claiming that its impossible to run an automated callback scam through a premium rate line. PhonePayPlus’ response when I raised these reports with them was ‘you can’t believe everything you read on the internet’.

2. In any case, if you do get bilked then PhonePayPlus can’t help you – you’ll just have try and convince your own phone company that you didn’t dial the number in order to get your money back.

3. One useful bit of information I did get was that this particular number leads to ‘directory service’, so the scam here is that of tricking people in calling a premium rate line, at £1.50 a pop, so they can tell you that the actual number you need to call to talk to the real Child Benefit Helpine is 0845 302 1444, a local rate call from anywhere in the UK.

4. Finally, it appears that hacking may not have be the explanation for the presence of false information on school websites, as further searching has turned up a school newsletter in MS Word Format which, again, gives the premium rate number as the contact for the ‘Child Benefit Hotline’. The unlucky dupes on this occasion are the Sacred Heart RC Secondary School, which means that all three schools are in Southwark and within a couple of mile’s radius of the Elephant and Castle. On the face of this, this suggests that all these schools may have been scammed the old fashioned way, by being fed false information, rather than getting done over by anything a little more hi-tech.

5. And we have another Southwark school caught up in this, as Google’s cache takes up to a ‘message home‘ to parents sent by Crawford Primary School.

Reader comments

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