All businesses, regardless of their size are susceptible to invoice fraud. Even a few fake invoices could result in thousands, if not millions of Rands of losses. Invoice fraud is when a person notifies your company that your supplier payment details have changed and provides you with alternative details in order to defraud you. These people are usually aware of the relationships between companies and their suppliers and know the details of when regular payments are due. The fraud may only be discovered when the legitimate supplier follows up on non-payments which makes recovering these costs extremely difficult.
Below are the four different types of invoice fraud:
Duplicated or Fake Invoices – These invoices are generally of small amounts, which makes them difficult to identify and track. These fake invoices usually involve compliance services, food bills, office supplies, etc.
Shell Companies – Invoicing through shell companies is one of the prevalent forms of invoice fraud. These companies are business entities that don’t have any physical presence except their mailing address.
Phishing – Phishing schemes occur when your businesses’s accounts department is lead under false pretences into transferring funds by pretending to be the fraudsters pretending to be a legitimate company. They will usually duplicate the contact details, the email of the authentic supplier, which leads you to believe that it is from the real supplier.
Over or Mischarging – Sometimes people include fake information in their invoices concerning numbers of personnel employed or hours worked for inflating the amount due on the invoice.
If you feel that you may be a victim of fraud get in-touch with Uphando Forensics & HR Services.