Fraud warning involving fake university orders

Wednesday, 18 July 2018 16:00

West Yorkshire Police is warning businesses of a fraud involving fake university orders.

Fraudsters are registering email domain names and making them look like they belong to UK university email addresses.

They are then using the supposed legitimacy that such an address brings to target and defraud UK and European supply companies.

The West Yorkshire Economic Crime Unit Hub is warning local companies to take precautions: “This is a warning that has come via Action Fraud and City of London Police and we are urging local businesses to take sensible crime prevention steps.

“Fraudsters are using domains that, at a first glance, are similar to genuine university domains – for example: xxxuk-ac.org to then order high value goods such as IT equipment and pharmaceutical chemicals in the name of the university.

“The goods are then received by the fraudsters before being moved on. No payment is received by the supplier.

“Fraudsters imitating one university’s domain (university based outside of West Yorkshire) lead to a cumulative victim loss of over £350,000.

“The best advice is ensuring you verify and corroborate all order requests from new customers or if an order request is from a new contact at an organisation that is an existing customer then verifying the request through established contact details to ensure it is legitimate.”

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