Prior to BREXIT, scammers were trying to scam people worried about what would happen, by offering fake government advice, fake government services to help businesses to transition to the new rules etc.

Then they switched to more threatening forms of scam e.g. you are not obeying the rules and must fill in some fake government form or be prosecuted or simply threats about paying fines or else face imprisonment.

Since BREXIT happened most of these scams disappeared but not all of them.

Scammers are sending out text messages and emails telling people they have to confirm their identity i.e. provide personal information / bank details to ‘keep up with EU standards’.

These messages are fake.

The messages contain a link to a website designed to look official and to get that information from you to pass to the scammer.

Some Common Scams

HMRC

Many business scams start with the scammer pretending to be from HMRC.

They may warn of non-compliance with the rules and need you details to confirm or may want you to sign up to some new guidance or want you to register your details with them.

HMRC do contact businesses of course but they never ask for confidential information by email or text message. If in doubt as to whether any messages are real – contact HMRC directly.

Bogus Brexit Investment Schemes

Scammers cold call businesses offering fantastic new schemes for making lots of money from opportunities through Brexit changes.

Cold calls offering investments are always fake.

Phishing / Vishing / Smishing

Phishing, vishing and smishing mean respectively, email fraud, telephone fraud and text message fraud.

Scammers use all three methods to try to get confidential information from you which can then be used by other scammers and in identity theft.

Typically, the scammers pose as government officials, new customers, suppliers, the Police, your bank or any regulatory body etc.

Never give out sensitive information without verifying the caller or texter or email sender and never click on links in unsolicited messages of any kind.

Purchasing Scams

The pandemic has caused chaos in worldwide transport of goods, shortage of shipping containers, shortage of drivers etc. and some scammers are offering special deals to alleviate these problems. The scammers have no real solutions of course – just lies to make money for themselves and leave people in a much worse situation.

Do not enter into commercial arrangements with anyone without having verified that they are a real business and they have a sound track record or you are likely to regret it.

Remember – if a deal looks too good to be true, the chances are that it is.

Fake loans are big business for scammers.

Many offer loans in the low thousands of dollars – but these are just phishing scams intended to get your personal and financial information to sell onto other criminals who will then rob you and likely steal your identity.

Some scammers go big on these scams – this latest one offers up to $1 billion on 25 year repayment.

It can be for any reason, but only in a list of selected countries.

However, that list includes continents and only the Antarctic is not included, so ‘selected countries’ actually means every country on earth.

As if the offer of untold millions of dollars isn’t enough, the scammer also includes an offer to pay referral fees for any projects brought to their attention.

Of course, the scammer has a personal email address rather than a company email and the sender’s supposed name of ‘Nizat Shafterit’ doesn’t match the email address.

The scammers just want your details so they can choose the best scam to try on you.

Pathetic.

The number of people replying to emails like this is probably only a few in a million or even less, but the scammers send out huge numbers of these and they latch on to anyone dumb enough to reply.

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Lots of scammers send out messages with attachments containing malware of various sorts.

Natalia Leshcuk’s message is a carefully designed document with lots of details and an attached file, but it describes a delivery due from the Ukraine.

The Ukraine is known for exporting raw materials such as iron, steel, mining products, chemicals etc. so how many companies in the West would be expecting a delivery from the Ukraine?

That must be a very very small number, so you can see that this choice of country by the scammer will rule out almost everyone she has sent the message to.

Also, the dates on the message are wrong – the message claims the delivery is due September 9^th having been rescheduled at our request and that her payment was due on September 3^rd but is overdue and we need to pay immediately.

That is a very confused message and is presumably one that has been used before, when the dates matched, but this latest scammer couldn’t be bothered even reading what she was sending out.

Complete rubbish.

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Your business administrator or accounting staff receive an email from the Chief Executive or Accounts Manager or a company Director asking for funds to be transferred immediately.

Maybe this is common practice in your company and you have procedures to make this safe, but otherwise it could well be a scam.

How the Scam Works

1. The scammer needs to know the name and email address of the Chief Executive. This is commonly available on the company website,  Companies House records, press releases etc.
2. Next, the scammer needs to know the email address of someone in accounts at the company. They may phone and ask who to send bills to by email or again the information may well be on the company website. Sometimes they look for contact details for the Accounts boss.
3. Now they can send in an email addressed to the person in accounts and try to make it look as if it came from the CEO. The email will ask for money to be transferred to a new account and it must be done urgently.
4. If the company is unsuspecting then they may transfer the money as requested and only find out later that it was a scam.
5. The scammer will try to make the message look as if it’s from the Boss. Sometimes this is sophisticated spoofing so the message does really appear to be from the boss’s email address but usually the scammers aren’t that clever and simply put the name.
6. So the email will something like From: Fred Bloggs (17368092 @yandex.com) where Fred Blogs is the name of the boss and 17368092 @yandex.com is the actual email address
7. The money is transferred as instructed but it goes to the scammer.

This scam has been widely publicised as some companies have lost a lot of money this way. But hopefully all companies now check on any such transfer rather than blindly following the email instruction.

Sometimes these scam messages are easy to spot.

e.g. a recent one addressed to fsmith @… looked valid but the email started with Dear Fsmith which gave the game away that it was computer generated and hence fake.

Another one contained the line “We need you to send £41,000 to a beneficiary today”.

Scammers use words such as “beneficiary” to try to make it fit any circumstance but in practice this has the opposite effect as no commercial business calls its suppliers “beneficiaries”.

Most companies have a standard email format e.g. [firstname]_[lastname]@… Or [initial][surname]@… which can make it easier for scammers to guess email addresses once they know a few for the company.

Don’t make it easy for scammers and do have procedures in place to prevent this kind of scam.

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An email claiming to be from Team World Company List but is actually from civa.be and it is a company directory scam.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, In order to have your business(es) inserted in our registry of Universal Businesses for the 2021/2022 edition: please print and complete the attached form (wbl2021cc.jpg) and send it to the following address: “  and gives a post box address in the Netherlands.

Lots of businesses offer such company directories and usually it costs something to get an entry or at least for an entry better than the basic.

In these days of the Internet, it is debateable whether printed registers have much value or not and online directories are largely ignored as people can usually find relevant businesses and carry out research on businesses using Google or other search engines.

However, the email is a scam and this is revealed in the small print at the bottom of the email, in the form of a difficult to read image rather than text.

The ‘advert’ says that updates are free and that may be true but the cost is in the subscription to the directory and that is automatic on returning the entry form and lasts for 3 years initially at a cost of 995 Euros per year (cannot be cancelled) and thereafter automatically extended. Trying to cancel the subscription is far from easy.

A total scam.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.