01952 588688
The “Director Scam” emails are still doing the rounds. Your business needs to be aware and remain vigilant.
There is nothing worse than discovering thousands of pounds has been transferred out of the company accounts - apparently at your instruction.
Even worse, you have no idea what your accounts department are on about as you didn’t give any instruction. These are the convincing emails that are ‘out there’ – someone posing as the boss of a company instructing staff to make payment into the fraudster's account.
An actual example of an email sent from “The Boss” being –
“I need you to make a same day payment of 10,850 pounds for me, can you handle that immediately?
Let me know now so I can send you the details for the payment”
Two Financial Scams
We currently know of two financial scams that are circulating. Please forward this to anyone in your company who is authorised to make payments so that they are aware and in turn reduce your risk of being scammed.
These scammers are very good. You will receive an e-mail from a director in your business asking you whether you are in, can you make a payment etc. The e-mail address will look as it should, but when you hover over it and look at the Outlook properties it will be something different. Also, if you do a reply to it will not look as it would normally, so please double check what reply e-mail address pops up in the To... box. The best safeguard however is to choose FORWARD and type in the e-mail address, as this way your director will get it and the scammers will not.
Whilst it may be awkward to call and double check with higher management if the payment is legitimate, the prevention will be far less harrowing than the consequence.
Director Scam
From our understanding of this type of fraud the majority of receiving bank accounts are Barclays, although other banks are involved. Hopefully you will not get caught out, but if you do time is naturally of the essence.
- Contact your bank immediately to get them to stop the payment. Ask for a reference number to ensure that it’s been actioned.
- If they have paid into a Barclays account call Barclays urgently on 0345 050 4585; this is their Retail Fraud team. If you contact Barclays early enough they should be able to put a stop on said account and get any money received or any balance that is in that account refunded to you. Ask for a case reference number, as this way you will know that it is being actioned.
- The other thing to do is report it to Action Fraud http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/contact-us, Whilst they aren’t able to get your money back, the more transactions they are made aware of will hopefully help in tracking the offenders.
- Change of bank details Scam
The other scam takes the form of an e-mail claiming that there has been a change to bank account details that you are paying into. If this is from an established relationship contact CALL them from the information that you already have on your database, not what has been sent to you. For further clarification ask to speak to someone other than the person who has sent you the e-mail.
Tips:
- When replying to an e-mail try to get into the habit of pressing forward and typing in the e-mail address, NOT pressing reply. This way you are not communicating with the scammer.
- The e-mail address that the scam e-mail comes from looks like one from your company. You can check this by hovering over the e-mail address, as quite often it will highlight who you are really replying to. This is not foolproof however, whereas pressing forward and typing the address in is.
We know that this can happen to anyone in any business sector, but we really do not want it to happen to you.
