A Lismore company has been defrauded $10,000 in a scam involving a ‘cloned’ email account.
Police from the Richmond Local Area Command have issued a warning following the scam urging people to question when a ‘supplier’ asks them to change the method of payments.
Police said the victim was a local company who uses another company to supply them with trade goods.
‘The victim has received emails from their supplier,asking that account payments be made to a different account as they were being audited,’ police said.
‘The supplier has had their email account ‘cloned’ and the payments made by the victim have gone to a fraudster. The supplier had no knowledge their account had been hacked and cloned.
‘The victim has been defrauded well over $10,000.
‘If you do payments via email and a supplier asks you to changes the way accounts are paid, it could be worth your while to call them and confirm.
Police said people should call the supplier rather than use email.
It seems to me that there are two crimes here, not one.
1. The fraudster defrauded a company of money by getting that company to put money into a fraudulant account.
2. By doing that the fraudster acted as the supplier. So he also defrauded the supplier of his identity. It is Identity theft. That is extremely hard to do on the outside of the company. Some specialist knowledge is needed.