Keep Yourself Safe From Scammers
Payment fraud from potential scammers is an ongoing problem when sending money in the digital era. Scammers have gotten better about replicating information and it’s getting harder to spot potential threats. Now, it’s very important to have a vigilant eye for falsified documents and shady practices. Recently, we had a case where a scammer intercepted a customer’s email and pretended to be an Insta-Pro employee. The customer was given an alternative bank account from the scammer. Their payment was then sent to the scammer’s bank account and went unrealized until the next day.
Here are a few tips to be aware of:
- The name on the e-mail address may be your normal vendor, customer or employee contact, but the e-mail address itself looks different (If the e-mail address looks correct, click on the e-mail address to see if another e-mail address appears. If so, this is a scammer.)
- The e-mail indicates that the vendor or customer’s bank account is undergoing annual auditing and cannot receive payments.
- They send multiple e-mails in a short time-span and they are all Urgent! While we may send payment reminders, we will never indicate a payment is URGENT, with pressure to send the money IMMEDIATELY.
- There are a lot of misspellings and improper English grammar.
- They send one bank account and if payment is not received by a certain date, they send a second or third bank account (as they’ve likely closed the first bank account due to other scams they are running).
- Sometimes they have changed the bank information on the Adobe document itself. If this information does not match where you have sent our payments in the past, then you should contact the vendor via phone immediately.
Please be sure to contact your Insta-Pro sales representative if you question any email from our company. Our #1 tip would be to NEVER trust emails for wiring instructions to different or new vendors, customers requests. Always confirm with the other party by phone or other communication, but not email.
