Fergie's Tech Blog

UK: ID Fraudsters Target Job Center Staff

John Leyden writes in The Register:

Crooks may have defrauded the UK tax credit system out of millions after exploiting a lack of safeguards in an internet site designed to service claimants.

HM Revenue & Customs shut down its tax credit portal website at the start of December after uncovering an attempt to defraud the system using the identities of Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) staff.

Initially it was thought that up to 1,500 job centre workers might have had personal information stolen. Now it is feared that up to 13,000 job centre staff might have been exposed to attack, with some reporting fraudulent claims made in their name. Fraudsters are reckoned to have secured the National Insurance numbers, names and dates of birth of thousands of job centre staff working in London, Glasgow, Lancashire and Pembrokeshire.

The information obtained was enough to make fraudulent tax credit claims redirected upon false addresses and accounts controlled by crooks. False claims of up to £1,000 a year appear to have been siphoned into fraudsters' bank accounts, PCS spokesman Alex Flynn told The Independent.

posted by Fergie @ 12/13/2005 06:55:00 AM