The Fiji Revenue and Customs Service advises members of the public to exercise extreme caution and vigilance when receiving and responding to unsolicited emails informing them that they have won money from the World Bank and need to pay tax clearance before the prize is sent to them.
FRCS is concerned that despite numerous awareness on various types of scams using FRCS to dupe people, members of the public continue to become susceptible to such fraudulent schemes and lose their hard earned money to swindlers.
FRCS advises people that the email address fijirevenuecustomservice@gmail.com is not used by FRCS. The Tax Service does not use Gmail accounts or any other email platform to send official emails. All official emails from FRCS will have ‘@frcs.org.fj’ in its email addresses.
FRCS is issuing this alert after cases were brought to their attention whereby Fijians were sent emails from the fijirevenuecustomservice@gmail.com account informing recipients of winning money from the World Bank, which was held by the Fijian Government, and requesting them to pay tax clearance in order to receive their prize.
The email also claimed that FRCS was working under the World Bank and insisted that the tax clearance payment be made online to the account provided by the sender. This is despite the recipient’s request to make payments at FRCS Office.
FRCS clarifies that they are a statutory organisation and do not fall under the World Bank.
It requests people not to fall victims of such fraudulent schemes and lose their money to the perpetrators of such scams.
If people receive such an email, they should contact FRCS on their hotline 1326 or email them on info@frcs.org.fj for verification before making any payments.
Members of the public can also report to the Fiji Police Force or the Consumer Council of such scams.
