Service NSW is a joke – its senior bureaucrats currently embarking upon a criminal extortionate joke at that.

So, out-of-the-blue back as a grant recipient of the 2021 COVID-19 Micro Business Grant on 1st August 2021 at 2:12 pm, one gets a phone call to our mobile on 11th April 2023 from someone claiming to be ‘Angela’ supposedly from Service NSW.

No surname, no position title, just ‘Angela’. One’s mobile phone displayed “Unknown” caller.

Mmm, so a tad sus as an expected scam from some dodgy dedicated overseas call centre!

We answered and just said “Hello!” so not giving our name to the caller.

The caller:  Is that (our name)?

We replied:  Who’s this?

The caller:  “I am Angela from Service NSW and I am ringing about your Micro Business Grant that you received in 2021, and you have been deemed ineligible and have to pay it back” (or words to that effect).  But first I need to identify you (but she is ringing me – an unknown caller).

We replied:  But you rang me.  I don’t know you.  I consider this call to be a scam. I do not provide personal details to anyone who phones me .

One then sensibly hung up after suggesting to this scammer politely that she get a real job.

The same day, one then phones Service NSW’s call centre switchboard number 13 77 88 to try to either verify the authenticity of this audit and the caller ‘Angela’, else to instead report a scam.

The person on the other end was in the dark and useless and couldn’t put me through to anyone that could provide information.

Watch one on Channel Nine’s A Current Affair  TV programme:

Link: https://www.9now.com.au/a-current-affair/season-2024/clip-clzv2inly003a0gq73ag6j50y

 

But this wasn’t to be ‘Angela’s last call to us.

A number of day later, I get another anonymous call to my mobile phone…

We replied:  Hello!

The caller:   This is Angela again and I am from Service NSW (some departmental name given) and I am following the Micro Business Grant audit…

We replied:  Well, may be Angela but I was approved for that grant more than a few years ago.

The caller:   Before I go on I first need to identify you.  And this conversation is being recorded.

[I think, after all the scammer calls one received regularly, well two can play this recording game]

We replied:   My mobile phone battery is low.  Can you ring me back on my land line?

The caller:   Yes, that’s fine.

We replied:   My landline number is ….XXXXX

[I plug in my mobile and set the Voice Memos button ready to record the next call]

The caller:  [To my landline]  Hello, is this Steve XXXX?

We replied:   Is this Angela?

The caller:   Yes this is Angela from Service NSW, we just spoke.  I need to record you before we proceed.

We replied:   Yes, that’s fine, same.  So I’m taping her too, as she’s doing to me.

Government and corporates of late claim some inordinate right to audio record their conversations with their customers. It’s as if they pompously presume they are some ‘big brother’ of sorts.  Yet they hypocritically attest to having and upholding some noble privacy policy.

Ok, but then this communications control game can work both ways.  We recorded the phone call on our iPhone – the whole bloodly lot!

We replay an selected extract below.  The entire audio we hold that includes disclosure that we were recording the audio, just like Service NSW invariably advised us from the outset – so ‘quid pro quo’!

This scammer disturbingly ended up being a contractor of Service NSW’s scam department, otherwise going by the name of its secret internal ‘Business Bureau‘, run since 2022 (timely post grant payout) by Executive Director Cassandra Gibbens outsourcing dedicated contracted debt collectors working remotely from home on performance commission to claw back the grant and given the fancy position titles of ‘Business Concierge’.

We herein supply an extract of one audio we taped from ‘Angela’ amongst many others using anonymous pseudonym first names only.  There are debt collectors like ‘Sam’, ‘Ellen’ ,’Nicole’, ‘Ruchi’, ‘Paula’, ‘Cindy’, ‘Blair’, etc, that have managed to be taped…

 

But Service NSW ring-in debt collector ‘Angela’ never did send us Service NSW’s Grant Guidelines, nor Grant Terms and Conditions, nor the tax checks that Angela promised us.

I was clearly talking to a dodgy debt collector on commission-only, replete with prepared spiel.

We presume Service NSW was in the midst of changing its terms both to suit its dodgy clawback scam of the Grant payment.

We also presume that Angela had no skills in tax, accounting, bookkeeping, interpreting terms and conditions, no legal background, perhaps no skills whatsoever.  She was a ring in debt collector on commission for Service NSW’s dodgy underhanded clawback programme dreamt up by CEO Greg Wells appointing Cassandra Gibbens as Executive Director of the secret Business Bureau to run the slimy extortionate shit show.

 

These overpaid over-powerful bureaucrats are so inside their insular bubble that they’ve created a culture of extortion replete with a unique language all to themselves and unique  position titles, like:

• ‘Service NSW Business Concierge‘
• ‘Integrated Intelligence Agency’ – does Ringmaster Wells have fantasies of working for the C.I.A.?
• ‘Service NSW Small Business Assistance‘ – clearly oxymoronic!

Service NSW could well be prepped to publish its ‘how to’ Enchiridion of Extortion.

Over subsequent days and weeks, one received a number of anonymous phones calls  from ‘first namers only‘ – Angela’, Sam’, Nicole, Ruchi, Sean, Paula, Sue, Linda, Craig,  ‘Ellen’ ,’Cindy’, ‘Blair’, ‘Kreenah’, etc; and emails claiming to be from Service NSW threatening me to repay the grant.

Our business copped 70 emails from the blighters – a bloated department of scam and spam!

It has been a total scam clawback programme by Service NSW allowed to be completely unaccountable with no moral compass under useless Minister Jihad Dib MP! – a Minns minister with 4 portfolios!

So our learned advice is to hang up on anyone claiming to be from government or any public utility like a phone company, water board, gas company, tax office etc. who asks you to first identify yourself to them.

It’s a no-brainer!  Just avoid the stress.

JUST HANG UP !