Gardaí issue invoice fraud warning

Gardaí have urged members of the public and businesses to be vigilant after a number of local entities have recently fallen victim to the online scam that saw Westmeath County Council defrauded out of over half a million euro earlier this year.

The Westmeath Examiner has learned that in one of the cases, a significant sum of money was paid out after a customer received what appeared to be a legitimate email from a contractor requesting that any further payments be paid into a new bank account.

Sergeant Brian Stones, Crime Prevention Officer with Westmeath Garda Division, said that there has been an “increasing trend” across the country of fraudsters posing as contractors and sending emails to their customers in an attempt to defraud them out of money.

“If an organisation or an individual gets an email from a contractor or employee looking to have their bank details changed, they should follow this up with a phone call, or only agree to change bank details for payment purposes if somebody comes to them in person.

“It’s important that people double check before changing the bank account that they are making payments into.”

In February, the council announced that it had been defrauded out of €515,000 after it received a fake, but convincing, email informing it that a supplier had changed bank, and asking that the firm’s payment details be updated.

As a result, when a legitimate invoice from that firm was submitted, payment went to the fake account.

The payment is understood to have been made in the middle of January of this year.

The discovery was made when the supplier queried why payment of the invoice had not been made.

Gardaí were immediately contacted and the council also engaged the services of specialist advisers to look into the matter.

In July, Westmeath County Council revealed that its insurance firm has compensated it for most of the money it lost in the scam. The remainder of the loss is being shouldered by the contractor to which they had intended the January fund transfer to go.

Chief executive Barry Keogh also revealed that an internal investigation was carried out within the council and revised procedures have been put in place to prevent a recurrence of such an incident.