Name Jacking Companies Made Easy In The UK

from the verification?--schmerification! dept

In this modern age of easy electronic communications and scammers everywhere, it appears that Companies House, the registry of company names in the UK, is a throwback to those good old fashioned times when you could trust companies to be who they said they were. In fact, they're so trustworthy, that anyone can simply go in and make changes to the database with a simple request -- allowing companies to be "hijacked." Some companies report that their addresses have been changed to addresses that scammers control, and in some cases, the names of directors have been changed as well. The scam is being called the "287 scam" (not to be confused with everyone's favorite, the 419 scam) because that's the form you fill out to change the address of a company. Company's House claims there's really nothing they can do to verify whether the information is legit or not. Apparently, it's never occured to them to send a notice to the old address noting the change. If the company is still at that address, they can quickly stop the change from going through.