The Malta Tax and Customs Administration has issued a warning over fake text messages targeting Maltese numbers demanding hundreds in payment or a “seizure will be carried out”.

“The Commissioner for Tax and Customs warns that fraudulent SMSs are being circulated through which the receiver is being asked to pay a debt of €960.22 immediately as otherwise a seizure will be carried out on 9th January, 2024,” a spokesperson told Lovin Malta.

“In the same message, a link to a false site is also being provided for the payment to be made.”

“This message is not being sent from the Malta Tax and Customs Administration. Where a tax payment is due, this is not made through a link provided in a message.”

The Commissioner urged anyone who received the message to not open the link provided, emphasising that any debts or due taxes would not be paid via a link in an SMS.

Maltese numbers often fall victim to all sorts of scams, from calls from unknown numbers to text messages on everything from parcel payments to missing delivery items.

However, this particular scam’s inclusion of an end date for payment to be made otherwise a “seizure” will be carried out indicates a new approach and potentially threatening style of scam SMSs.

The holiday period was yet again a particularly busy one for scammers, with another series of fraudulent text messages being sent out to people with notifications that they have pending MaltaPost parcels ready to be picked up against payment, seemingly targeting those who may have shopped for their gifts a bit too close to Christmas and are still desperately waiting for their parcels to arrive. In this case, the SMS would direct users to a URL which mimics the national postal service’s website, but is instead a fraudulent one.