New bank details scam

Lori Cirefice wrote:

A partner of mine in Asia was recently affected by this scam, which I had never heard of before, so I thought I'd warn fellow translators and agencies.

The partner's email was "hacked", and the hackers sent out emails to the partner's customers (from their address book), explaining that they recently changed their bank details and to send all transfers to the new bank account instead of the old bank account.

Of course, the "new bank account" belonged to the hackers!

Thankfully, one of my partner's customers felt "funny" about the email and alerted them to the problem... and the scammers got no money.

The reason the customer felt funny about it was because the email from the hackers was written in bad English. So please, be wary and suspicious - and keep your email login details safe!

Tom in London wrote:

... although it's doubtful that a customer or bank would just accept an email asking them to shift everything over to another bank. There is always a process you have to go through.

Tony M wrote:



I have many customers who pay me by bank credit transfer, and I have occasionally had to ask them to change the account to be credited; on not one occasion has anyone queried it!

When I invoice, stipulating a wire transfer as the payment method, I always say "using the bank details you already have on file"; I think my customers are sufficiently vigilant to alert me if there should have been a change requested in between invoices — but you never can be sure!

So getting one's e-mail account hacked is a worrying scenario — again, disturbingly common using the 'free' e-mail providers (it's happened TWICE to one of my friends!)