Skip to content
Cheltenham Times

Friday 6 November 2026

Blog

Police forces impersonated in scam calls using spoofed phone numbers, warns Report Fraud

16 Oct 2026

Report Fraud, run by the City of London Police, is urging the public to be sure of who they are talking to after a spike in reports of calls from ‘spoofed’ police force phone numbers.

Scammers are impersonating police forces by making calls that appear to come from genuine police phone numbers. Report Fraud says anyone receiving an unexpected call claiming to be from the police should not rely on the number shown on their phone.

The alert is part of Report Fraud’s newsroom, which publishes news and campaign articles on the service. Recent items on the same page cover SIM-swap fraud, payment diversion fraud and a warning about passkeys after email and social media account hacking rose by 417 per cent.

More from Cheltenham

Bah humbug? Not this Christmas!

Paul Cooper from This Country stars as Scrooge in a brand-new, laugh-out-loud A Christmas Carol at Cheltenham's Parabola…

19 hrs ago|Blog

Join the Cheltenham Times newsletter

Local news, events and community updates from Cheltenham Times — straight to your inbox.