Fraud Attempts on Business

[Zoon]

Just a warning for everyone, we have been contacted by two of our suppliers alerting us to someone pretending to place fake orders on our accounts for collection of goods.

The lady in question is calling from a mobile and has a scouse accent, they are also sending purchase orders which actually look quite convincing but are in a word document format, which doesn't match our genuine ones.

The Police and Action Fraud aren't interested as no money has been lost yet.

We have alerted all suppliers to the fact that this is going on.

The two attempted orders are coming in at just over £35k.

[Eric Mc]

Zoon said:

The Police and Action Fraud aren't interested as no money has been lost yet.
.

You would think the authorities would be interested in preventing crime?

[Zoon]

Eric Mc said:

You would think the authorities would be interested in preventing crime?

That was my thought as well, but it appears not.

[The Moose]

Zoon said:

Eric Mc said:

You would think the authorities would be interested in preventing crime?

That was my thought as well, but it appears not.

Very funny. No one gives a st!

I presume your supplier would be on the hook for the goods?

[Zoon]

The Moose said:

Very funny. No one gives a st!

I presume your supplier would be on the hook for the goods?

Legally I assume so, as the order hasn't originated from us.
The scamsters aren't that bright, ringing from a mobile number, signing emails off with a different surname to the account name and emails from an outlook account, not our domain.

Fortunately we have good relationships with them and they know all our employees, so when a woman with a different accent rang up alarm bells started to ring.

[55palfers]

£35K of attempted fraud and Plod not bothered - it's tragic.

They turned up at my local Sainsbury's the other week to nick a shoplifter - maybe £35 worth of stuff??

You'd think this is a perfect chance to catch them red-handed when the goods get delivered. Easy collar surely?

[NorthDave]

The best I have had recently was a chap asking if we would be interested in quoting for a project. We said yes and then he sent through a link to download from. The download link looked very like an Adobe document sharing site but only had email and password fields. He tried to tell me that my usual email and password should work. I told him I didn't have a "usual" email and password as I hadnt accessed the site before. Apparently his IT department has synced them to my email server!
The contact and domain used originated in Russia.

[98elise]

Zoon said:

Eric Mc said:

You would think the authorities would be interested in preventing crime?

That was my thought as well, but it appears not.

Even when fraud occurs plod like to classify it as a civil matter.

In my case the fraudsters didn't even try that hard to hide. I had names and home addresses, but plod told me it wasn't a crime, they simply had not paid yet....I'm still waiting 20 years later.

[ollie plymsoles]

The scam sounds familiar.
A few years ago a lady with a Scouse accent phoned my wife's work saying they were from xxx xxx company and due to collect a lorry load of beauty products. They knew all the customers details so must have hacked the emails to get the correct details.

The wife arranged for them to collect the products after calling the police ( the conmen didn't know that they didn't hold any products at the office, they are stored in various warehouses around the country) so knew it was a scam as all customers know this.
So the conmen arrive at their small offices in a huge arctic blocking the road, the police are called and I don't think they even came. The trucker realised he'd been set up to steal goods but nothing was ever done about it and they never heard off the Scouse woman again.
This was a hgv full of products so would be 10's of thousands.!