Invoice (redirection) Fraud
How this type of fraud works:
In this type of fraud, a criminal poses to be one of your known regular suppliers or partner, tricking you into sending a payment to their account instead of your supplier’s legit account.
The criminals can do that, after they have got access to your supplier’s email. They then modify a pending invoice’s account number for their own and forward it to you for payment usually posing a sense of urgency.
How to spot an Invoice scam:
Typically the fraudsters will ask you to send a payment to an account which is different from the one that you used to send your payments for a particular supplier or partner.
How to stay safe:
- Remember that the email sender will be exactly your genuine supplier’s one, so just confirming that is not enough.
- Always thoroughly verify the payee details before submitting any kind of payment, no matter how urgent the requestor makes it to seem.
- Do not rely only on the details provided in an email even if the sender of the email is your supplier’s one.
- If you’ve done business with this supplier in the past, contact him via phone that you already hold in your records and used before.
- Check past well-paid invoices on file, to verify that the payment details match exactly those you’ve successfully used in the past. Even so verify the email instructions received via a verified phone number.
- Make sure you enable the “Two-step verification” for your emails.
Where to get help:
If you've received an email that appears to be from a supplier or partner of yours and you think it might be a scam then forward it to us at info@bankofcyprus.com and abuse@bankofcyprus.com