COUNCIL’S WARNING OVER PARKING FINES SCAM
SCAMMERS have corrected their spelling mistakes after Halton Trading Standards alerted residents to emails demanding payment for bogus parking fines.
The previous version of the message said the recipient owed cash for a “penality charge notive”.
Halton Trading Standards has now warned the errors have been corrected in an updated email scam.
The emails purport to be from HM Courts and Tribunals Service but are sent from an email domain ending “@visualgestion.net”.
Nor do they address the recipient by name, or specify the location where the parking fine was incurred other than saying the “United Kingdom”.
A phone number in the message is caveated as “temporarily unavailable”.
In reality the scammers want their intended victim to cough up the cash via a link.
Internet users are advised to delete the message if they receive it.
Fraud has become rife on the internet in recent years, while other criminals opt to call victims directly by phone and some doorstep scams and rogue trader incidents also persist.
Scambusters at Halton Trading Standards were not surprised that the spelling errors have been corrected in this latest bogus parking fine ruse.
A Halton Borough Council spokesman said: “This is not surprising, because the nature of these scams is that they are always evolving.
“It is not impossible you may receive the same email, but coming from a different scam email address.”