There are fraudsters at work who try to defraud people, so to speak because a tax refund is paid via DigiD. Customers at seven Dutch banks should be especially careful. This way you can recognize the fraud.
DigiD fraud via e-mail
Fraudsters are again at work following a well-known recipe. Victims receive the nice message that they will be paid a tax refund. They are shown a certain amount and are asked to leave their account number on a web page.
Last Tuesday reported Scammed?! all that these fraudulent emails are doing the rounds. This time they have been drafted quite convincingly and come from the e-mail address: ‘noreply@mijn.overheid.nl’. The subject is: “Checking your declaration”. The correct logos of DigiD, iDEAL, the central government and the tax authorities are used in the e-mails, and there are also very few language errors. You can find the full text of the email at the bottom of this article.
Victims who leave their account number can lose a lot of money, and the fraud is especially aimed at customers of the following Dutch banks:
- ABN AMRO
- ASN Bank
- ING
- Rabobank
- RegionBank
- SNS Bank
- Triodos Bank
fake sms
Those e-mails have been circulating since last week, but a similar fraud is now also occurring with text messages. Bee DroidApp you can see an SMS that supposedly comes from DigiD, and that talks about a “refund”. An amount is also mentioned in the SMS and there is a link that leads to a page where you supposedly have to fill in your details.
How do you recognize the fraud?
First of all, because the government does not communicate information about tax refunds by e-mail or text message, but by post. In the case of the SMS, it is also clearly visible that it is sent from a German telephone number, although it is quite possible that the e-mail is distributed by different numbers.
Although the email is quite convincing as mentioned, there are still a number of things that ring a bell. The text states that there is a tax assessment of 21% VAT, but this is not the case with a tax refund. There are also a number of stylistic errors in the text, such as “tax refund”, which is incorrectly written in two separate words. The word “collect” is also used when the amount should be paid out.
This month there was also talk of a new fraud with WhatsApp. These are fake emails that talk about a so-called new security protocol for the messaging app. Two years ago, fraudsters already suspected that they were defrauding people with a fake DigiD app. Have you noticed these fraud cases? Let us know in the comments at the bottom of this article.
The content of the fake email
E-mail address: ‘noreply@mijn.overheid.nl’
Subject: “Checking your declaration”
“Dear Sir / Madam,
You are eligible for a tax refund for the year 2020. We have made a calculation for ourselves. Objections can still be made.
The amount that you will get back from the tax is approx €937.17. We will transfer this amount to you as soon as possible.
Receive
Amount of the refund €937.17
VAT (21%) € 196.81
Total receivable € 1,133.98
Collect my refund
To collect your tax refund, we expect that the name of the account holder matches the name on which the relevant refund is registered.
Yours sincerely,
MyGovernment”
– Thanks for information from Androidworld.