Bank Details Fraud

Fraudluent e-mails are still as prevalent as always, but we are seeing an outbreak recently of messages supposedly from colleagues, clients or suppliers asking you to either update your bank details with new account numbers, or asking you to make a same day payment for something.

One example from this week has been:

"Hi Keith,

We need to make a same day payment to {supplier name} or this project is going to fall behind, I have their bank details, how quickly can we set this up?

Kind regards,
Paul"

Keith and Paul work in the same office. In this instance the attack was unsuccessful as Keith knew Paul very well and he would never sign his e-mail off in this manner so knew straight away that something was wrong.

Unfortunately, not all of these e-mails contain bad grammar or spelling and as a consequence are very difficult to spot and can be convincing. There are a number of technologies we can implement to lessen the volume of the messages but our best advice to you currently is to confirm any financial transactions or requests by telephone before taking any action.