{"id":934,"date":"2020-01-14T16:17:14","date_gmt":"2020-01-14T16:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.withcreative.co.uk\/dev\/real-life-fraud-catching-businesses-out\/"},"modified":"2021-01-14T23:22:14","modified_gmt":"2021-01-14T23:22:14","slug":"real-life-fraud-catching-businesses-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.withcreative.co.uk\/langricks\/real-life-fraud-catching-businesses-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Real life fraud catching businesses out"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
The number of instances of fraud are on the increase and fraudsters are becoming more and more sophisticated.\u00a0Here at Langricks we have seen real life examples of the following frauds and want to warn all office workers, employees, businesses owners of the latest scams catching people out:<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

An email sent from a director<\/h3>\n

An email which appears to be\u00a0sent\u00a0from a business owner or a director is sent\u00a0to the bookkeeper, the purchase ledger clerk or the individual making payments. \u00a0It would be\u00a0written in a similar style to an email typically written by the director (the fraudsters would have been spying on the emails written by the director in order to ascertain the right email tone) it would\u00a0request\u00a0an immediate payment to be made, with the email\u00a0containing\u00a0the\u00a0amount and bank account details. \u00a0These\u00a0emails often stress a level of\u00a0urgency insisting that the director is going into a meeting and they would like the payment making by the time they are out of the meeting. Not true.<\/p>\n

The interception of a purchase order<\/h3>\n

We have seen several instances where a supplier will genuinely attempt to send an invoice to a customer, but this will have been intercepted by the fraudster and the bank account details will have been changed. \u00a0Chris Langrick says:<\/p>\n

It is IMPERATIVE that where bank account details have been changed or\u00a0a new supplier is taken on that the supplier is PHONED to verify the bank details, you must ask them to confirm\u00a0their bank account details to you in order to cross check these to the details on the invoice.<\/strong><\/p>\n

HOWEVER do not ring the telephone number on the invoice, as this could have also been changed, always\u00a0check your records or the supplier’s website and ring the phone number you see there.<\/p>\n

It is not always fraud<\/h3>\n

Recently a few clients have received letters from the ICO (The Information\u00a0Commissioners Office) requesting them to register and\u00a0pay a fee (usually around \u00a340 for a small business), where some businesses thought they might have\u00a0not needed to register with the\u00a0ICO and therefore assumed the letter was another scam, it actually transpired that it did apply to them\u00a0due to the business\u00a0having CCTV\u00a0in operation.<\/p>\n

Final comment<\/h3>\n

Banks are taking less and less responsibility for fraud and this is often\u00a0leaving businesses out of pocket by\u00a0thousands of pounds, you can never be too careful, check and double check again before making any payments online or over the phone.<\/p>\n