Someone has been posing as my business, registered us for VAT and sold goods under our name

[D Bruce]

It's a bit of a long story - the long and short of it is - who do I go to in order to investigate, and also protect the business from any other things that might have occurred under our name that I'm not aware of.

Here's the story:

To start with, approximately around July 2020 I started to receive letters from HMRC regarding a VAT registration (which I never made, the company was turning over less than £10k at that point).

Since that moment I've been battling with HMRC about the registration and how it occurred. Unfortunately, the online VAT number had been linked to a Government Gateway account that was registered to someone else (phone number and email), so HMRC were unable to help me with anything as they kept saying I'm not authorised on the account, even though my wife and are clearly the sole directors of our company.

Just to add in, this did coincide with the time that Amazon made some BREXIT related changes to their European Fulfillment Programme (to which we were enrolled) which required companies to be registered for VAT in order to remain in the programme. This also coincided with the birth of my son, so nights were sleepless and days were a little hazy, among other big personal changes at the time. Although we withdrew from the programme as we weren't VAT registered (to my knowledge at the time), it maybe have been that I didn' deregister from the programme by the required deadline. So I thought that maybe somehow Amazon had some authority to act as an agent and register us for VAT, which meant I didn't immediately believe fraud had been committed. I would probably have battled much harder had I know that it wasn't Amazon who did it.

Well, finally around two weeks ago and after countless emails writing to their fraud department I was able to have the VAT number registered, still not knowing how it had all happened in the first place. I haven't actually heard anything back from HMRC yet, I can just see that the VAT number has been deregistered, so I haven't been able to get any answers as to what happened.

However, yesterday I received an email from a "customer" who was asking if she could buy a replacement tabletop - she'd been gifted one of "our" tables previously but had broken the top and wanted to buy a new one. Now - we are a company that sells organic herbal supplements, not rattan and glass tables.

Luckily for me, she included an invoice which finally shed light on to the whole situation for me. The invoice is dated from July 2021.

The invoice is made out from our company and shows our, now deregistered, VAT number on it. It also shows the ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) of the product. From this I was able to look up the product on Amazon. On the listing, I can see that product is sold by an entity called XXXXX whose registered business is: XXXXX LTD (company number: 99999999). I won't include their actual details here.

So this company/person was selling on Amazon under our name - I'm not sure what else they were up to. All I can tell from Companies House is they are Chinese and aren't affiliated with any other companies. They do use the same "Registered Head Office" as us though, so there may be some link there.

So what should I do to protect myself, and have this person suffer some kind of justice? I'm reluctant to go to Amazon on this as their customer service is useless and they are more likely to close my own seller account than do anything to the other one!

I will certainly be going back to HMRC with this new info, but should I be talking to police? Anyone else?

I have already contacted our formation company who hosts our "headquarters address"

Any advice greatly appreciated,

Cheers!

 

[Ozzy]

You should use the “Report” service shown on Companies House website when you look at the details of the company. You should definitely report it to HMRC fraud team.

Sadly not much will happen but at least reporting it flags on the records you’ve voiced concerns and it’s nothing to do with you.
I would raise it with Amazon fraud, no matter how useless, but try to handle it via one of their video calls to a person and don’t get off the call until you’re confident the person gets it. Keep a record of everything agreed on the call and follow it up by email with agreed actions.

The police won’t do anything.

 

[D Bruce]

Cheers Ozzy, thanks for the advice.

One question though - how do you manage to get an Amazon employee on a video call? The best I've ever managed has been with a regular phone call, and even then they're not too useful when off-script.

 

[Ozzy]

Sorry, just asked the wife @TheFairyBoutique how she managed to organise it (as she had a video call with someone from their team when she had an issue with her Amazon account) and she cannot remember how she managed it.
I can only suggest it must be some option or process when contact support it or customer service.

 

[NicoJ]

I would report this to Action Fraud. Do you know if VAT returns have been filed against the registration number? HMRC are notoriously slow so I wouldn't assume that this has gone away from their side. Keep notes and logs of all your communications with them over this.

 

[paulears]

I'm confused - you have a business selling one type of product, and are a partnership, not a Ltd Company. A Ltd company are trading as Samename Ltd, while you are using Samename? They were using your VAT number? On Amazon are they Samename Ltd, with their address, or your address?

Could this just be two businesses with the old problem a similar name causing confusion. Sole traders and non-Ltd businesses always get less protection from this because if somebody wants to start a business, informs companies house, and sets up bank accounts - most searches won't discover you, so even HMRC might get confused and get you confused and give them a VAT number that is yours? They could have simply assumed you were becoming a Ltd company and just moved things without checking? Mistakes happen. Is the VAT you have been reporting been on your account, or theirs? That bit doesn't make sense? You cannot submit two sets of figures for the same VAT number, so how is this happening?

What has the other company said to you about the problem? If you get their queries, presumably they get yours? HMRC and companies house don't normally find two entities with similar names a problem as for the sole trader account it uses your UTR, for the Ltd company, it's the company number?

 

[The Byre]

It is a scam and the person getting scammed is you and me in the form of HMRC.

It is VAT fraud. The fraudster (aka the parasite) picks a small company (aka the host) without a VAT reg. number and pretends to be that company, but pays zero VAT to HMRC. After about a year, the fraudster picks a new company. Most of the time, the host is unaware of their hosting of a parasite, until HMRC asks for their money - unless, as happened here, someone checks on the address at CH or checks on the VAT number against that company's main activity.

All that is yet another reason why I perform basic due diligence even when buying relatively securely on eBay or with a credit card.