'Bogus email' scam warning

Cheshire East Council has issued a warning over a 'scam' email which tells people that the withdrawal of the spare room subsidy ('bedroom tax') has been axed.

The hoax email has a Council form attached – asking them to complete it and send it back.

The Council is urging people who have received such an email to delete it immediately and to not complete the form. The claims the email make are false. No changes are being made to the withdrawal of the spare room subsidy – it will stay the same.

People have also received Facebook messages with similar information, falsely claiming the 'tax' was abolished in April 2014.

Councillor Les Gilbert, Cheshire East Cabinet member in charge of communities and regulatory services, said: "We want people to be aware of this scam to ensure that they are not conned into filling in forms and giving away personal or financial information to unscrupulous fraudsters.

"Our contact centre has received a number of queries from members of the public about this email and Facebook message. We are urging people to ignore these as the information is incorrect.

"We have alerted Cheshire police to this issue and would urge people to be vigilant. If you receive this scam email you should delete it and not complete the form. We do not know who is sending this email and it could contain a potentially-harmful computer virus."

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