British businesses have been reminded of the importance of keeping their financial information secure by using professional confidential waste destruction services and being more vigilant about releasing private company details after it has been reported UK firms lost £93 million in invoice scams last year.
According to the latest findings revealed in UK Finance’s Business Payments Survey, £92.7 million was lost as a result of fraudulent activity surrounding invoices, including fraudsters convincing businesses to transfer money their way by posing as payees. Managing director of economic crime at UK Finance Katy Worobec said: “Invoice fraud could happen to businesses of all sizes. It’s vital that all employees are trained to identify potentially fraudulent transactions.”
She went on to say fraudsters “will often get hold of details that allow them to pose convincingly as regular suppliers”.
Therefore, the advice to businesses is to verify with a supplier – using your existing contact for them – whether their bank account details are actually changing before sending money to the new bank.
The survey revealed the scale of the problem, with 43 per cent of British businesses being unaware of invoice fraud at all, with smaller companies being more ignorant about the threat. Just 55 per cent of sole traders knew about the problem, compared with 68 per cent of small businesses and 84 per cent of large firms.
Business giants are not exempt from invoice fraud though, and Google and Facebook were both subject to a massive scam recently, costing them $100 million (£75.6 million), reported Reuters.
Earlier this week, Lithuanian-born Evaldas Rimasauskas pleaded guilty to convincing the corporations to wire this huge amount of money between 2013 and 2015 by posing as Quanta Computer, a hardware company from Taiwan that had previously worked with both Facebook and Google.