You scamming me, are you scamming me?

Hopefully this helps someone out someday:

I received a phone call from a man this evening (30/Jan/2019) calling himself Mr Trevor Francis Barrett (feel free to give him a call cos he forgot to hide his number 07901883530) who said he was from Rundles & Co ltd working for the Northampton Combined Court.

Trevor was calling to inform me that the bailiffs were on there way to serve me a CCJ and a court writ for a debt from of a company that I had advertised with over 2 years ago (it was more like 5).

The company in question called themselves a charity that sells advertising space in drug awareness booklets (kids 4 life magazine and others) that are distributed to schools.... sounded like a good charitable thing to do. I did it once but they just kept calling about the next one, very pushy. I cant remember the name but RCP rings a bell. It is a brlliant scam, you send your advert in , they send it back mocked into a magazine, pay some cash bingo you feel good for supporting a local charity.

Then I found sites like:

• https://www.tapa.co.uk/charity-advert-scams/
• https://www.smallbizgeek.co.uk/bogus-charity-magazine-ad-scam/

Alarm bells...

I told them the next time they called me that I knew they were scamming me and asked to be removed from their systems, never heard another word until Trevor called me (can you guess that is  not his real name yet?)

The scary thing for me was he had all of the information from the charity, my address, company name, amount I paid etc, it was as if he was looking at their CRM with my details right there. 

The charity/advertising company had apparently raised a CCJ against me for lack of payment for the last 2 years, at what they said was their standard rates of ￡299/month for a drug awareness booklet, so a grand total of ￡4300. Their maths is out, but I got the picture.

Trevor said then that they think the company is a scam, he would make notes for his boss and help out where he could, but unfortunately cant do anything about it. Legally they have to serve me my CCJ, which will be a black mark against my name for the rest of my life making mortgages and loans incredibly difficult to get in the future and hand over my court writ. Luckily, he was able to make sure the court appearance would be in a local court as there is no use driving all the way to Northampton for a court case that I should win anyway.

He told me lots of other things.... all the same scare tactics to make me feel pressured, "Are you in the house now", "they will value items in the house and could seize them to collect the debt", "we dont want any moey off you right now, but they will when they arrive".

Trevor told me to look him up on the https://certificatedbailiffs.justice.gov.uk site and he there was listed, exactly the same details he gave me a few seconds earlier, as if by magic.

Trevor reminded me that the bailiffs were on the way to my house to claim back the funds. If I wanted to postpone this I just needed to say the word and he would sort it out for me. I said the word and he called head office just before it closed, he was being really nice and trying to help me out.

 While he was off, I called 101. I ended up speaking to Surrey Police, who said they couldn’t get involved right now as its a civil matter, but to call the CAB tomorrow. No help really, but funnily enough when I said to Trevor I had called them, he jumped in and said “they cant help it’s a civil matter”, as if he knew all along.

 Trevor called back a few times while I was talking to the police, he was really keen to make sure things were sorted before the bailiffs arrived. I know because the first thing he said was "the bailiffs were nearly there, but he had cleared it with head office and they would only hand me my writ for court and a copy of the CCJ and they wouldn’t ask for any money if I paid ￡2000 into a 3rd party Legal Advisory Service account that was safe and no one could get to until after the court case".

Feel free to top up his account: 

account name: alp legal advisory

sc:          23-63-07              

acc#:     01915265            

ref:        ale74691             

(I have emailed the bank in question and told them about this fraud - they are uaccount.co.uk an online only service. Bank Name: Wirecard, Bank Address: 3 Hood St, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 6JQ )

 When I asked how I could tell if this was a legitimate account he said I would need to trust him, but its legit as its a 3rd party, the money doesn't go to Rundles (no sh*t Sherlock) or to the charity, it would sit and wait for the court hearing.

I was told to BACs the money now and take a screenshot to show the bailiff as proof of payment, so they wouldn’t be forced to take payment on the door or remove items to the value of ￡5000 (they have to add on their service charge on top).

I said I would pay it straight away and hung up and called the company he said he worked for Rundles.co.uk 

I called them and spoke to a really helpful staff member who asked me the name of the bailiff and sighed when I got to Trevor B..... She told me taht unfortunately they have had a lot of calls recently from people being contacted by someone calling themselves Trevor Barrett and that they only worked with council tax and utility debt, so its not their Trevor. She asked me to contact actionfraud as they couldn’t do much themselves, but they were sorry it had happened.

Noticed a few missed calls from my new friend Trevor, he is persistent.

I called 101 again to register that someone purporting to be a bailiff might turn up at my door and ask for money. They said don’t open the door, get some ID and check the ID out and turn them away if there is anything dodgy. Then log it with actionfraud as well, however if things get out of hand call 999. 

Note: a few more missed calls from my new friend Trevor, he is getting desperate.

I was pretty sure at this stage that Trevor was probably not on his way to take away 5k worth of my stuff, and the whole incident was getting very whiffy.

Trevor had called back many, many times, after about 10 more missed calls I answered and pretended to not know him for a bit then said "Oh hi Trevor, I have just called Rundles to verify who you are", to which he said that he didn’t work for them anymore, that was just the company he worked for when he got his bailiff licence. Trevor then started to get agitated "I don’t know where you are going with this sir" got repeated a lot, I knew exactly where I was going, he didn't understand.

Trevor was dropping out of character now and started to get very pushy and aggressive with me, he couldn’t understand why I didn’t think paying a legal advisory service with an online only bank account was a good idea.

We then had an argument when he said he was recording this call and would use it in court, I couldn’t help myself "you cant record this call, you have called me on your mobile", he replied after a little pause where I hope he looked at his phone and went "bollocks", "yes you can, go to the menu and look for voice recorder, its there I tell you, you can", so I asked if he would send me a copy of the call so I could check if he had said he worked for Rundles or not. He wasn't happy with my quick thinking and declined.

On a roll, I asked for a copy of all of my personal data (the first time I have used GDPR for good!), unfortunately he wasn’t up for that either. However he said would email me the CCJ and writ, but he wouldn’t attach the call recording though or anything else.

"But under the new GDPR rules, you have to give me a copy of all of my own data..."

He fell out of character now, way out of his comfort zone and I think I even heard his shoulders slumping. "I don’t know where you are going with this sir, but I have done everything I can to help you, the bailiffs are on their way" and he hung up.

I wanted to call him back and press on, but I was happy he wouldn't be calling me back a quick check out the window and I could see a big white van with "Trevs bailiffs" on the side, so things were looking up.

That was a few hours ago now and I guess Trevor will be in bed now, or stalking through the books for the next person to ring, hoping that they get flustered and just pay... disgraceful really.

I want to say that I feel sorry for the real Trevor, who really is a bailiff and lives not that far from me (Its amazing what you can find online) and probably does a great job. I know that Rundles are also being affected and its things like this that can affect a small business a lot.It is a pity that the police aren’t in a position to offer more help or even advice on what you can and cant do if real bailiffs appear unannounced, but there is a lot of info on the .gov.uk sites that you can look at.

If someone calls you saying that they are a bailiff (they wont, as far as we know they don’t call, so that’s a dead giveaway for a start) and start a telling a story, remind them that its all done in writing first off before they are even allowed to turn up at your door (7 days I think), not 30 minutes.

Best thing to do is find out who the caller work for and call the head office, I was lucky that Rundles were still open and happy to help me out. I hope that other debt collection agencies are open that late because the real bailiffs are out until then, so you need to verify them somehow.

For more tips on dealing with real bailiffs https://www.gov.uk/your-rights-bailiffs

For dealing with or reporting fake ones who you think are fake https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/