There have been reports of businesses suffering substantial losses as a result of a very sophisticated fraud involving bogus requests for supplier bank details to be changed. The fraudsters contact businesses posing as an existing supplier and request that the business change the payment details for this supplier. If you change these payment details you can end up paying the fraudsters instead of your genuine supplier.

The fraudsters:
> use email addresses and telephone numbers that are similar to that of the genuine company
> may have previously called your company or the supplier to find out the contact name for payments and supplier numbers, so that the correct details appears on correspondence
> use director/company secretary signatures from the actual business which have been copied from annual reports

Please closely scrutinise request and make checks using the historic contact details of your suppliers. There are reports that this scam is targeting housing and construction related businesses, but all businesses should be vigilant.