Our Dispute Resolution Team Leader discusses email scams affecting businesses.
Dispute Resolution Team Leader, David Birks, highlights the most common email scam.
Transcript:
We’re seeing a lot of small businesses being hacked or sent invoices which are effectively a scam. Within hours or minutes or receiving an invoice from a legitimate firm, they then receive another invoice which appears on the face of it to come from the same email account, has the same details in it for the work carried out, but has different bank details.
Within the email, it will generally say that they’ve made a mistake, and can you pay the money that’s owed to that account which is shown on the invoice?
This is, indeed, a scam and we’re looking at quite large amounts of money and money that small businesses can’t afford to lose. The banks are obviously doing their best, but one things that I would advise to all customers is that if you receive an initial invoice and then a second invoice where the payment details are different, ring the company you’re dealing with, ring their accounts team and always verify your payment details.
If you’re concerned about the implications of email scams for your business, please get in touch with our Commercial Litigation team to allow you to continue focusing on running your business.