Foreign supplier being scammed, leave it or...?
Discussion
Our longstanding supplier of 6 or so years based in Germany (we spend £2m a year with them) has for a short while had their customer based spammed by the usual "we have changed our bank account details, please contact us for details and pay invoices outstanding ASAP"
The supplier sends out regular emails warning their customers around the world to ignore it. One didn't and lost a decent amount of money (they are based in Japan and their bank wouldn't help).
I got one this morning and decided to play along, a few emails go backwards and forwards and they send me the account details to pay the invoices. Usual IBAN/SWIFT etc.
It turns out the account is registered to a bank about 20 minutes from our offices here in the UK.
What's the best course of action? Police? Bank themselves to warn them? The account must be registered to someone, whether they are a part of the scam or innocent victims I couldn't say.
It may be that the scammers are attempting to buy something from an unsuspecting innocent party and promising to send the money over?
How would you play it? Part of me wanted to see if I could get them to send me some money to confirm it was their account.
The supplier sends out regular emails warning their customers around the world to ignore it. One didn't and lost a decent amount of money (they are based in Japan and their bank wouldn't help).
I got one this morning and decided to play along, a few emails go backwards and forwards and they send me the account details to pay the invoices. Usual IBAN/SWIFT etc.
It turns out the account is registered to a bank about 20 minutes from our offices here in the UK.
What's the best course of action? Police? Bank themselves to warn them? The account must be registered to someone, whether they are a part of the scam or innocent victims I couldn't say.
It may be that the scammers are attempting to buy something from an unsuspecting innocent party and promising to send the money over?
How would you play it? Part of me wanted to see if I could get them to send me some money to confirm it was their account.
Think the police won’t have the resource
Wonder if the bank will be interested if you ring their fraud bit to explain
Likelihood is they have just hijacked someone else’s account and once rumbled they will move to another
Also, possibly assume there could be naughty types behind this....
Wonder if the bank will be interested if you ring their fraud bit to explain
Likelihood is they have just hijacked someone else’s account and once rumbled they will move to another
Also, possibly assume there could be naughty types behind this....
Had a similar thing with someone sending me falsified supplier invoices.
Contacted the bank. They couldn’t care less.
Contacted Action Fraud. They said there was nothing to go on and said as no crime had actually been committed they couldn’t do anything.
Made me cross. There were bank details; either they were real and the bank could give up the address details, or they were false and the bank hadn’t done its identity checks correctly. Either way there was the opportunity to do something.
Contacted the bank. They couldn’t care less.
Contacted Action Fraud. They said there was nothing to go on and said as no crime had actually been committed they couldn’t do anything.
Made me cross. There were bank details; either they were real and the bank could give up the address details, or they were false and the bank hadn’t done its identity checks correctly. Either way there was the opportunity to do something.
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