Invoice Redirection Scams

Invoice redirection scams usually target businesses and clients of businesses that handle accounts for and large sums of money such as accountants, builders, lawyers, etc. It can involve a real invoice being intercepted and the payment details being changed before forwarding the now fake invoice to the client. It is often not discovered until the invoicing business chases up a missing payment and the payment to the incorrect account is discovered.

There are variations to the scam, such as an email claiming to be from a higher up in the company, requiring payment to a new bank account or payment method other than usual, or emails that target individuals with invoices for a service such as Netflix or Amazon, or even an unspecified product or service from an unidentified company, which are often from a generic email address as below:

The bottom line is responsibility ultimately lies with the payer. Paying a scammer instead of the intended business does not fulfil your obligation to that business for services or products you may have purchased and you are still required to pay. There may be an argument if the security breach occurred due to negligence on behalf of the invoicing business, but often this can be hard to prove, especially without the business's co-operation.

Prevention is the best protection. The best way to protect yourself from these scams is to always follow up on the invoice in person or over the phone and query payment detail changes or unexpected invoices before paying. Often such scams come from email addresses that are slightly different to the company or spoofed, which may or may not deliver to your spam or junk folder, depending on your filter settings.

Don't open attachments or click links in suspicious emails. If the scammer is not an opportunistic employee, they can be someone accessing your system through malicious code injected in a link or a document.

Scammers also rely on accounts employees who pay all invoices they receive without question or query and catch many businesses out this way.