Received letter saying that I owe Universal Credit £19,000 - have never claimed

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I received a letter on Friday saying that I owed UC £19,000 in overpayments and if I don't pay they'll contact my employer/send bailiffs round.

I've never claimed UC. During the period they state (May 2020 and May 2021) was I self-employed, so claimed the SEIS grants as my income dropped. These were declared on my self-assessment form, of course.

Called number today and explained. The letter/info held on me is my correct name, address, NI number, DOB, phone etc. The woman I spoke to say that 'she'd make a note' and it took some pressing to get her to escalate it to Fraud but she doesn't know what their time frames are etc. She sounded very unconcerned.

Called UC who gave me another number to call, which I'll do tomorrow, as I couldn't keep taking phone calls at work.

It's either identity theft or a massive mistake. What do I do to escalate this? Do I call the police?

TIA

Sure its not a scam?

It's not a scam.

The DWP records show that I owe this money.

Make a record of your calls to them. Can they tell you which bank account number they think they paid the money to?

I think it is a likely scam, the suggestion of the last 3 digits of the bank account should help.

Report it to Action Fraud and get a crime number then give that to DWP. Ask them to confirm the bank details where the money was paid, and to which bank. Report the fraud to that bank and raise a complaint with them, ask them to provide info about the name/address on that account, and ask for copies of your ID that was used for opening the account. They might hide behind data protection at that point but if you have a complaint reference number you can give it to DWP and ask them to liaise with the bank when they investigate. Get copies of statements for all your bank/building society accounts that show you didn't receive any payments over that period.

If they really did think you'd been paid £19k and then some in UC, they'd be able to give some details about dates, amounts, which bank account the money went into, details of correspondence, statements and the like.

At that point, you'll be able to prove that the account isn't yours, you never received the money or similar.

There's obviously something gone wrong somewhere, and it could be a hassle to sort out, but I'd not worry too much about it in the short term.

You've never claimed, never received any money, so it's less of a worry than if you had claimed and had received some money, because in that case, you'd now be unsure as to whether they're going to expect to you to pay back money that you did receive in good faith and have spent.

There's been loads of fraudulent claims made during lockdowns as they weren't checked. They're sifting through them now, It's going to be a ballache to sort out but stand firm.

Thank you so much all.

I've just called 101 who advised that it's probably not 'fraud' as it's not another party asking me for money.

They also suggested calling CAB, which I'll do tomorrow.

I don't know if the debt management people will have the bank details, but I'll call UC again and ask them.

You should write back. Don't call. (a) You'll save yourself the hassle of being on hold during your working day and then being pushed around between people who don't know what's what and then having to go through it all again with the next person you call (b) This is potentially serious, and you want a paper trail of the communication.

Write back telling them you've never claimed or received any money and suggesting that they check the details of the bank account into which it was claimed.

You called the number on the letter? It's all part of the scam.
DON'T CALL THAT NUMBER AGAIN.

CAB should be able to help

This happened to me and was very common when Universal Credit ID checks were reduced during the early pandemic. Very stressful but got sorted eventually. You need to call the DWP debt management number. Tell them that you believe you've been the victim of a stolen identity/fraud and want it to be referred to their internal stolen identity team to be looked at (obviously it's impossible to ever speak to them directly!) In my case it was really obvious that I hadn't made the claim (person used a different address, bank account, etc) and it was dropped. Took a few months though. Good luck.

You can also check for the right number by googling Universal Credit and making sure it's an official gov.uk website.

www.gov.uk/universal-credit/contact-universal-credit

I don't know if there are fake UC websites that charge people for claiming or run premium rate/scam telephone numbers like there are for other Government services, so it pays to be careful.

Call the correct number tomorrow, not the one in the letter.

Ask for a breakdown in writing of all the payments that they say they have made to you.

Then consider calling Citizens Advice as they have a team that will help you with this.

WTF is going on with links on this site today.

It looks right when you write the post but then comes up with nonsense when it does post.

The link was gov uk / universal credit contact us and there you got the right phone number.

That's who I called today.

The letter came to my correct address. I will call tomorrow and ask them to check what previous letters about UC have been sent to my address because I haven't received any.

As I said above, it was the same phone number as the one I called to pay back overpayment of my mum's pension when she died.

The only way the DWP knew that she'd died was because I filled in the Tell Us once form.

They might hide behind data protection at that point but if you have a complaint reference number you can give it to DWP

they will have to surely give you a reason as to why they can't give you your own data

asking for copies of your I.D. given at the point of claim, which forms of I.D. to prove address and date of birth and your banking history

It's not them asking for money that's the fraud its the original claim that's the fraud surely the police understand this? Maybe ring back and explain you are a victim of identity theft you didn't claim universal credit

19k in one year? That sounds like a huge amount.

They would have likely made a mistake. They are not trained well and it's a complicated system. I've seen many errors. Even when you explain to them the error they don't get it, it takes ages to sort and usually ends up in making a complaint.

My mum got one of these, they have sent numerous ones out in error. She was told to ignore any further correspondence and they had updated their system

The fraud is between the person who made the claim and the DWP.

I don't understand how they have all my correct details, all of them, including NI number and DOB.

I will call the debt management people and UC tomorrow and ask them to look in their systems as to what letters have been sent out and what bank account the money was paid into.

This is the first correspondence I've had. It has coincided with me moving on to PAYE after being self-employed for a long time, so I do wonder if someone has just pressed the wrong button somewhere tbh.

I think the difficult thing will be to get whoever answers the phone at the DWP/UC to actually look at the records. The woman I spoke today sounded like she couldn't care less.

If I have no success doing that, I'll contact Action Fraud and CAB and try that way.

The MN scam obsessives are on the case

Not every cock up by governement agencies is a scam you know, mistakes happen, fraud happens but every letter appearing to be from the DWP is not automatically trying to con you out of huge sums of money you don't have

I can imagine it might be a hassle to get it sorted but I'm sure they will eventually

The letters to my mum weren't an error though.

They had overpaid for 2 weeks between her death and the details going through Tell Us Once.