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ST JOHN’S, Antigua, Jun 24 2016 – The Office of National Drug and Money Laundering Control Policy (ONDCP) is warning Antiguan businesses to be aware of a scam that re-directs payments for invoices submitted by email.
The ONDCP said in a statement that it has received reports from local businesses that their customer invoices have been intercepted and emailed to their clients with substituted bank account information allowing the funds to be directed into accounts set up by the fraudsters.
It would appear that businesses affected have had their computers or email accounts hacked, enabling the interception to occur and the fake invoices to be sent in place of the real ones. Usually, the fraud is not detected until the customer is alerted by complaints from suppliers that payments were not received, the ONDCP said.
Explaining how the scam works the ONDCP said scammers hack into vendor’s/supplier’s email accounts and obtain information such as customer lists, bank details and previous invoices.
The hacker, purporting to be your supplier, sends an invoice to your business and requests a change to usual billing arrangements and asks you to transfer money to a different account, usually by wire transfer.
The email may look to be from a genuine supplier and often copies a business’s logo and message format. It may also contain links to websites that are convincing fakes of the real company’s homepage or links to the real homepage itself.
The scam may not be detected until you receive a complaint from your legitimate supplier that they have not received payment.
