Work email address in use by someone else as Apple ID

Hi all,

I was wondering if someone has stumbled across a solution yet for the Apple ID issue.

To share my situation:

I recently started a new position at a company I have never worked before. My work email address that was created by the corporate IT team. So it cannot be created by anyone. However, that email address is apparently in already use by someone else as an Apple ID . I received a number of email notifying me that someone logged in on new devices (iPhone 13, iPad Mini) using my work email address as Apple ID.

My company's IT department says there is no other person with the same email address working for company.

I suspect that someone who holds the same name as I do once worked at my current company, but is no longer with them and that person is still using that work email address as Apple ID.

Contacting the Apple Support team did not really help. The provided advise was to ask my company to create a new email address for me(?).

Resetting the Apple ID password is not possible, because it then asks me for a phone number. Which is obviously not mine. Like other posts mentioned I also tried to lock out that Apple ID by entering the wrong password a number of times.

No idea how to resolve this. Anyone?