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Fraud
In the coming months as customers start to move their accounts to other providers, criminals will try to take advantage by contacting people through scam emails, scam SMS messages, scam social media messages, or scam calls. Fraudsters will try to gather personal/company information, bank account details, or card details that could be used to compromise your account or card. Please be alert to these scams and never provide your PIN or any passwords to a third party.
At a time when large numbers of businesses will be moving their accounts, businesses should be particularly aware of ‘Invoice re-direction fraud’ which occurs when a business receives a fraudulent email claiming to be from an existing supplier/creditor or in some incidences, staff within the company. The fraudster advises that the bank details for the payment of future invoices should be changed or requests that a payment should be made into a certain account. These approaches can be made over the telephone, by letter, and by email. The request is not necessarily accompanied by any specific request for payment but if the request is acted upon, the next legitimate payment will be made directly to the fraudster’s account.
Key advice on invoice redirection scams
- Verify all requests purporting to be from your creditors, especially if they are asking you to change their bank details for future invoices.
- Do this by phoning a known contact – do not use the contact details on the letter/email requesting the change. Look up the number independently.
- If possible, set up designated Single Points of Contact with companies to whom you make regular payments.
- Instruct staff responsible for paying invoices to always check them for any irregularities.
- When an invoice is paid, send an email to the recipient informing them that payment has been made and to which bank account. Be mindful of account security and consider including the beneficiary bank name and the last four digits of the account to ensure security.
- Fraudsters often look for information regarding contracts and suppliers on an organisation’s own website. Consider whether it is necessary to publish information of this type in the public domain and ensure your staff limit what they share about the company on their social media.
More important information is available here on the FraudSMART website.