Builder invoice fraud

[JBeanGarden]

I’m feeling totally mind blown by the last few days emails with our builder for our £100k plus extension. We have spent some time meeting and getting quotes from several local and well rated builders. Over the last few days we have been emailing around the finer points of our contract and deposit amounts. Last night we got a final quote, contract and invoice for the first materials payment. It asked for money to be sent to a company we didn’t recognise so we googled and emailed the builder straight away to query it.
The builder replied from his phone late in the evening totally baffled and said to give him a ring. After a call this morning he sent WhatsApp screen shots of the invoice he sent out and it’s for a totally different company (his) and account details. It’s also for about £15k less. We’re going to sit down together to go over the paperwork ‘old school’ style but it looks like all our correspondence has been intercepted and changed by a third party if it was sent from their computer.
He’s really confused and upset and it’s totally thrown how I feel about embarking on spending our life savings improving our home. Thank goodness we spotted it and my gut told me something was wrong. Has anybody else ever come across this? Did you report it to the authorities even if you didn’t make a payment?

That sounds similar to the scam/fraud where a solicitor's emails are intercepted and house buyers are conned into sending huge sums to the fraudsters thinking they're paying the deposit/balance for a house purchase.

You don't know whether it's your computer/phone/email that's been hacked or the building firm's. It could be either.

you should report to Actionfraud, even though you haven’t lost money.
https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/

https://www.nwcrc.co.uk/post/what-is-supplier-invoice-fraud

I was going to say exactly this.

Id guess it’s the builder who has been targeted, as they can follow your emails then send the fake bank details at the right moment.

I would definitely report to the police and action fraud.

Even if you are sure you are not the compromised party, change your passwords and enable 2FA to cover yourselves.

It's also worth looking at who the emails are actually from- we had this with out solicitors, and though they had been compromised, the person responding has subtly added one additional letter to the domain they were responding from.

That's terrifying. Thank goodness you spotted it.

There was something on You and Yours on Radio 4 about this scam a few years ago. It is not uncommon and builders seem to be a particular target. Great that you realised, but definitely need to report it because the police may be able to track someone from the invoice or add it to evidence that they are already aware of.

We checked our passwords and log ins for 2 factor authentication etc straight away (was already in place Our side). The weirdest thing is that the email addresses stay the same throughout and it’s a consistent chain of emails. We started to get suspicious when we noticed they’d say ‘evening’ and emails would arrive in the morning. Sounds like a very thorough fraud.

You can spoof an email address so that it looks like it's coming from another, just like scammers can spoof their phone number to con people via caller display on phones to make calls look as if they're from trusted phone numbers.

Happened to us at work. They changed the bank details on the invoice and phone number. It was only later realised the email address was one letter different ie fdddd@ instead of fddd@, long chain of emails between us. They got @£30k

I’ve seen this fraud in various high value scenarios although not building works before. I’m not surprised though I’m afraid.

Through work I was involved in a case of major fraud where emails were intercepted and the perpetrators copied the style of one of the parties to a supply contract and have been emailing with the victim firm for several months before stealing hundreds of thousands from them.

This was exactly like the case I was involved in, except they stole several hundred thousand.

The need to be constantly wary of fraud is becoming quite draining.

Whenever making a payment to a new payee, a business, friend, or even family I always make a test payment of an odd amount (e.g £1.17) and phone the recipient asking them to confirm how much has arrived. I also ask them to confirm the balance due if I am paying an Invoice / Bill.

That way I can be certain I have their accurate Bank Details logged in my Bank Payee lists and can be confident any Invoice hasn’t been intercepted and changed.

I am sure scammers will find some way to get round my precautions in the future, but they do help a.t.m.

Thank goodness you spotted it. An acquaintance was scammed out of £85k after emails at a high-end home refurb firm were hacked. Fortunately they were able to recover the money from the bank, but it took a huge effort and some solicitor involvement.

The only reason this person discovered it was because they happened to pop in to discuss some finer details and the firm asked apologetically "sorry to bother you, but when can you transfer the balance". Acquaintance already had....

I sincerely hope that your builder is contacting any other clients he has, in case there are others who have been similarly targeted.

This happened to me when booking a holiday cottage directly with the owner. Our email exchange was intercepted when I was asked to pay the final installment. I felt that something was wrong because it was a completely different bank account to the one I had paid the deposit into. Also, there was something a bit 'off' with the way the email had been written. The English wasn't quite right but it was very subtle. The email address was exactly the same. I phoned the holiday cottage owner and asked if he had changed bank accounts and he had no idea what I was talking about!!

I used to think it was just the elderly that were scammed online. Now I know you can't be too careful.

This happened to a friend of mine who was employing a builder last year. Luckily they realised something was suspicious about the email before they paid any money out.

We had this at work.

We sell high value vehicles, and our salesmen outgoing emails were hacked so when they requested a deposit that email was stopped / blocked and then replaced with the fraudsters own bank account.

They got the money, our customer had his funds refunded (maybe by the bank not sure?)

Yes it’s very sophisticated scam!

I do the same- send a small test sum of a very specific amount , say, £1.73 and then make sure I speak to the builder/whatever in person by a number I know is correct to check it arrived and ask them to tell me the amount.
check bank details so many times it's ridiculous- I practically know some tradesmens' bank details by heart now.
My bank/CC provider is hot on querying any new payee. I bought some office equipment recently and my CC provider blocked my CC payment as it was being made (embarrassing) contacted me to check it was OK, and then I had to phone the supply company all over again and do the payment all over again. They said they didn't mind, it happened often, and we agreed that though it took a bit of time, it was a Good Thing Really.
Above all, never lie to the bank, as some conmen ask you to.