Registry Trust, the non-profit organisation which maintains the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines, has issued a warning following reports of people receiving phone calls from fraudulent bailiffs telling them they have a pending county court judgment (CCJ) which needs to be paid immediately.
CCJs are judgments issued by county courts in England & Wales as a result of a creditor taking court action against an individual or business who has failed to repay a monetary debt. These judgments cannot be ‘pending’. Once they have been received by the defendant, they appear on the public Register where they remain for six years unless they are cancelled within one calendar month, ‘set aside’, or paid in full and then formally ‘satisfied’ by providing proof of payment to the court. The only way to pay a CCJ debt is to the original creditor or representative of them.
The scam involves a caller claiming to be a bailiff who can stop a ‘pending’ CCJ from being added to the Register if the debtor ‘pays up’ there and then. The convincing caller may suggest that it is a historical debt that the supposed defendant is unaware of (eg. an uncancelled subscription) which has already been taken to court and found in the claimant’s favour due to lack of response.