Business email compromise scams cost Australians millions of dollars a year.
Scammers are getting increasingly sophisticated in their attempts to get your money or personal details and increasing numbers of people are being scammed out of large sums of money via invoice redirection fraud.
With this type of fraud, the scammer will pose as a legitimate supplier and request payment of invoices to a bank account they control.
In order to make the invoice look legitimate, the scammer may have hacked your email or your supplier’s systems. The invoice may even come from a supplier’s email address (if that’s been hacked) or more likely from some slight variation of it, which makes it difficult to identify the scammer’s email from a legitimate address.
Most of the time, you won’t detect the scam until your supplier contacts you for the payment they haven’t received.
To protect yourself:
- Double check email addresses - scammers can create a new account which is very close to the real one; if you look closely you can usually spot the fake.
- If you think a request is suspicious, telephone the business to seek verification of the email’s authenticity (do not seek verification via email)
- Do not call any telephone number listed in the email; instead, use contact details that you already have on file for the business, or that you have sourced independently.
Further information regarding how to protect against current scams can be obtained from the government website www.scamwatch.gov.au.
If you have any questions please get in touch on 13 61 91.
