Scammers posing as government agencies and local universities made off with $749,000 worth of goods after duping companies into delivering them.
The police have received at least 11 reports of these purchase order (PO) scams since August.
These firms received e-mails purportedly sent from a generic procurement e-mail address or by an individual identifying himself as the chief procurement officer.
The e-mails requested quotations for electronics, IT-related items and medical devices like automated external defibrillators and laser projectors. After an agreement was reached, a fake PO was sent to the firm. No payment was made.
Investigations traced the delivery addresses in the POs typically to freight forwarding companies engaged by scammers to ship goods to countries such as the United Kingdom and Nigeria.
This is usually slightly different from the domain names used by government agencies and local universities.
Examples include procurement@moegovt-sg.com and purchasing@nus-edu.org.
When in doubt, companies should verify the sender’s domain name, said a police spokesman.
To check the authenticity of the request, companies should also contact the relevant organisation on its official contact number instead of that provided in the e-mail.
They can also look out for indicators such as grammatical or spelling errors and delivery addresses of private residences, freight forwarding companies or a self-storage facility.
For more information on scams, members of the public can check www.scamalert.sg or call the Anti-Scam Hotline on 1800-722-6688.
Ang Qing
Source: www.straitstimes.com