Cyber criminals have accessed the online tax accounts of tens of thousands of people in a major fraud attempt, it was revealed today.
HM Revenue and Customs said it had locked down accounts after an attempt to fake PAYE rebate claims was picked up by its fraud team.
Facing MPs HMRC’s chief executive JP Marks said around 100,000 people were affected by an operation mounted by ‘organised crime’, though he stressed that they had been trying to take money from the organisation, rather than customers.
And he told MPs there had been a ‘small loss to the taxpayer’ as a result.
But he also revealed that it happened six months ago in December last year, and several arrests had already been made since by an international investigation.
HMRC sent out a notification to customers today, saying they did not need to take any action.
Mr Marks told MPs on the Treasury Committee this afternoon: ‘It’s about 0.2 per cent of the PAYE population so around 100,000 people who we have written to or are writing to, to notify them that we detected activity on their PAYE account.
‘To be clear there has been no financial loss to those individuals, this was organised crime fishing for identity data, outwith of HMRC systems, stuff that banks and other people will unfortunately experience, and then using that data to try to create PAYE accounts to pay themselves a repayment and or access an existing account.
HM Revenue and Customs said it had locked down accounts after an attempt to fake PAYE claims.
Facing MPs HMRC ‘s chief executive JP Marks said around 100,000 people were affected by an operation mounted by ‘organised crime ‘, though he stressed that they had been trying to take money from the organisation, rather than customers.
There has been a criminal investigation, some arrests were made last year and a lot of work then done to intercept this incident.’
