Warning: Insolvency Service impersonationPosted: May 5, 2023

Warning: Insolvency Service impersonation

We have received the following statement from R3, The Association of Business Recovery Professionals, which we feel is important to share.

'We have been informed by the Insolvency Service that an email from a fake email address, 'info@theinsolvencyservice.co.uk' claiming to be Chris Pleass (Director) and possibly intended to build up to an attempt to defraud the agency, has been circulating.

How to identify if an Insolvency Service email or website is genuine

You can recognise a genuine Insolvency Service domain (the part after the @ in an email address, or the web address of a website) as one of these:

Firstname.surname@insolvency.gov.uk is the general format for personal email addresses
 

mailboxname@insolvency.gov.uk is the format for shared mailboxes
 

https://www.gov.uk is the main government website for all public information and guidance, including details of the Insolvency Service
 

https://www.insolvencydirect.bis.gov.uk is an older site which still holds some of the Insolvency Service's official content (BIS was the predecessor to the former BEIS department)
 

https://report-director-conduct.service.gov.uk is an example of an active site which provides a service to the public, linked to, and appearing like, the main www.gov.uk website. The name at the beginning will vary, but all will end in ‘service.gov.uk’. These may not have an obvious link to the Insolvency Service, but all will be official government sites.
 

No official Insolvency Service emails or websites will use a domain ending in ‘.co.uk’. They will all use the official ‘.gov.uk’.'

As always with these situations it is important to check the source of any information that you receive particularly if you are not expecting correspondence.