How do you report a phone call from someone pretending to be VM?

[AllPointsNorth1]

Good morning.  I wonder if you would be kind enough to help me out.  About 10 minutes ago, I received a phone call from a UK commercial phone number (says it's in Birmingham, but could be a presentation number).  I answered the call and was greeted by a gentleman with a very deep South Asian accent, calling himself Mandeep.  He asked for me by name and told me he was called from VM's technical department about my router, which he said needed to be upgraded.   He said he needed access to my computer to do the work... Red flag right there.

I told him that I didn't have a home service from VM, and I was going to notify their security department that I'd had a suspected scam call, and before the words had fallen out of my mouth, I was told to [****] off and he hung the call up. 

I have retained the number on my phone, and would like to pass it to VM in order to have them made aware of it.  I know other people who have been caught by this scam, including one of my relatives who lost £330 when the caller took over his computer through a programme called AnyDesk. 

Could you please advise me as to how I can pass the phone number to you securely? I don't want to put it on the forum for security reasons.  Thanks!

[goslow]

If you have Googled the number, and found it belongs to a business, then in all likelihood the scammers have simply cloned that number from a legitimate company and used it as a fake caller ID. This is reported many times on here. Often private numbers of residential customers are cloned as well.

The victims of the number cloning will be unconnected with the scam and usually the first they know about it is when they start receiving irate call-backs from those who have been contacted by the scammers.

Scammers usually swap their fake caller ID regularly so the number you report is unlikely to remain in use for very long. If the number does belong to a legitimate business, there is no too much VM can/will do about it.

[AllPointsNorth1]

Hi.  As I said, it could be a presentation number.  I have since tried to call it back, and I get the "Whoops, you might want to check that number and try again" thing.  When I said it was a commercial number, a search reveals it's a BT line, that's all I can get, but there are reports on these "who called me" websites, that the number is marked as dangerous.

[goslow]

Equally possible that the scammers have simply lifted a legitimate unused number from a BT number range/pool and put that into use as a fake caller ID. OFCOM helpfully publishes lists of number ranges, and who owns them, which the scammers make use of. Reports on here describe that the fake number is often matched to the local area dialling code in an attempt to add further authenticity to the call.

[Gareth_L]

Hello AllPointsNorth1,

Thankyou for bringing this to our attention.

Sorry to hear you have received a spoof call.

Sadly there is not much we can actually do about these. As soon as the number is recognised a fake. Its easy to set up a new one and the calls continue.

We do have a bit of info here if that helps.

I guess the best thing to do is be vigilant.

Gareth_L