A recent story in the Kent Messenger caught my eye.
It was the tale of Tim Hale, the boss of a Maidstone based business, who returned from holiday to find his company’s finance department had sent £20,000 to a scammer!
It turns out, whilst he was away, his finance department received an email, supposedly from Tim, asking for two payments. These emails looked exactly like they had come from the boss – the email address had been cloned.
Apparently, the employee in question also queried this with Tim and received a reply, from the scammers, to do it urgently.
Here is a link to the full story on Kent Online > Kent Business Scam
Another aspect to this fraud is that the scammers asked for the payment to be sent to a bank account in the name of the boss. It turns out the name of the account is often irrelevant when making payments. Something I think the banks need to put right; this fact often makes the transfer request seem more realistic.
The story in the Kent Messenger got me thinking about the controls in your business and whether your finance department would unquestionably transfer cash into an account.
I hope not!
There are simple controls you can put in place to stop this type of fraud, such as getting your finance department to call you on the phone to confirm or even having a code word or pin number to be quoted on these types of transfers.
Having looked into it, it seems, this is not an isolated incident. There are stories of the same type of fraud on the BBC website and according to the Yorkshire post, over 5,000 people have suffered with this scam – Read more Here > Yorkshire Post Scam Story
If you have delegated the payments process in your business, then there are thousands of reasons to check the controls you have in place.
Most of the time, the cash lost is never recovered.
So a few checks and balances could save your business in the long run.
