A Thompson accountant says three of his clients have been the attempted targets of scams like this in recent weeks.
A Thompson accountant says several clients he works with have recently been the targets of an email scam that can be tough to detect if you’re not playing close attention.
Dayton Barenz said scammers are trying to get people’s — and businesses’ — money by misdirecting payments and that he has had three clients receive such emails in the past few weeks.
Invoices are sent out with requests for payment, but instead of cheque or credit card payments, recipients are asked to pay by e-transfer or by wire transfer to a bank account number that’s included.
Unlike some email scams, however, these ones are fairly sophisticated, using the names of real companies and addresses that might appear to be legitimate, unless people do a little bit of digging.
“At first glance, it’s the proper names of the company, but it’s not the exact email address of the person you’re normally dealing with,” says Barenz, who has seen such scam emails sent to clients in Thompson, Gillam and Nelson House over the space of just a few weeks.
Barenz says he’s seen other email scams in the past in which it would immediately be obvious that the sender was not affiliated with the business they claimed to be representing.
“I think people are becoming smart enough or aware enough about these now they’re starting to actually look at the email addresses,” he…
