What to do if you’ve lost money in a Invoice Scam
Banks regularly deny claims for unfair reasons. A fraud gets called a civil matter, a generic pop-up gets called a warning, or a convincing scam gets judged with hindsight. None of those reasons is the final word. Decisions can be challenged and escalated to the Financial Ombudsman Service, and we know where they most often go wrong.
How to spot an invoice fraud
Invoice scams start with a payment you were already expecting to make to a builder, a solicitor or a conveyancer. The fraudsters slip into the email thread with an invoice that looks exactly right, and the only thing that has changed is the account number.
How do Invoice scams work?
You may be communicating with a company or person about paying an invoice for work or a service they have completed for you.
The fraudsters will insert themselves into the process, usually by finding details online or, more commonly, hacking into your email address or that of the company or person you are dealing with.
From this, they will know that you are planning to send money in the next few days or weeks and will email you pretending to be the company or individual you are dealing with.
They will either use a very similar email (one letter difference) or claim they have a new email address and that you can communicate with them through the new email.
After this, they will send an invoice for the payment. Believing you are dealing with the legitimate person or company, you will send the money and pay the invoice, unknowingly paying a fraudster instead of the legitimate recipient.
Subsequently, the legitimate person or company will contact you, asking why you haven’t made payment yet. This is when the realization that you have been the victim of an invoice scam occurs.