Businesses should make sure to double-check all invoices they receive, as it is common for scammers to send out fake bills to companies in an attempt to get money or personal information. For example, we recently received a very convincing invoice from what appeared to be Yellow Pages, but we don’t have an account with them.
The one we received was for a small amount and made it appear as though we were past due.
A convincing invoice we received that turned out to be fake.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) regularly offers information on how businesses and individuals can protect themselves from scams, when we spoke with them we were told this was relatively common.
According to Communications Specialist Kristin Matthews, these are called “directory scams”. She says it can start in multiple ways “Sometimes you will receive a call and they will wait for you to say “yes” and record it. Then they use that as authorization to send you a fake invoice. Sometimes you can just get the invoice without the call, in this case, the scammers have likely used information from your company directory to make a convincing invoice.”
The BBB recommends just ignoring these types of letters. If you have fallen victims to one of these types of scams they advise that you contact the Anti-Fraud department with the RCMP as well as recording the incident on the BBB’s Scam Tracker so they can provide better information on what types of scams are out there and how to avoid them.
