Scammers Send Fake Invoices While Bosses Are Away
from the pay-up dept
Apparently, the new popular scam in Europe these days is to send companies fake invoices for accessing internet "directories." The scammers are hoping that with so many people on vacation over the summer, people won't check around carefully, and will simply cut checks. The amounts usually aren't all that high, either, making it less likely that an accounts payable person will carefully check over the invoice. Isn't this why companies use purchase order systems?
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Who's got deeper pockets?
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This is pretty common.
- fake domain registrars who send you a bill. You don't want your domain to vanish so (not realising that these guys have nothing to do with that at all) you pay up!
Fake copyright registrars — ditto.- Small office supply invoices for copier paper and the like. These are often so small that someone can approve them without a cosignature; they try to send them to a secretary (who doesn't want to bother the boss over something so small and thinks that it was something ordered and shipped) or A/P who again, they hope, figures that its so small that the paperwork was overlooked, and hell, the company always needs copier paper, right?
Sometimes there are interesting variations. For example the domain registrar can actually be "slamming" you.Or the trademark guy can actually be promising to send you a copy of your publication in the federal register (by being a "trademark notification service" that "tracks registration of your mark" -- i.e. they send you your own paperwork back). The latter case can get them around the fraud statutes. In fact an earlier employer was scammed this way.
Since I approve everything in writing at my company, much to people's annoyance, I catch these things before they go out.
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