We have just had experience of a scam that we believe has originated from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, which you might wish to warn your readers about.
The 'customer' contacted us by e-mail asking for a proforma invoice for a piece of equipment valued at £15,000 and our bank details. We checked out the company as far as we could and found details of a legitimate company of the same name on the internet albeit at a different address.
Last week a payment of £58,950 was paid into our bank account. The next day an e-mail came in from the 'customer' saying they had made a mistake and could we return the balance of £43,450 by urgent swift to the following bank:-
BANK NAME- NOOR ISLAMIC BANK
BANK ADDRESS- ROLLA SHAJAH , U.A.E
ACCOUNT NAME- IYANDA FOLARIN
ACCOUNT NUMBER-00831114750015
SWIFT CODE- NISLAEAD
We made enquiries as to which bank had actually paid over the money to our account, suspecting that there may have been a money laundering activity taking place and that we would only credit the originating bank.
On making these enquiries we discovered that the payment was not made through the banking system but a cheque was posted directly to our local bank branch with accompanying documents from P & O Ferries in Portsmouth giving some credibility to the transaction. The bank advised us that to be sure the funds remained in our account we would have to allow six working days for the cheque to clear.
It then became obvious there was a scam taking place and had we fallen for it we would have lost over £40,000. As expected the cheque bounced this morning when it reached Barclays in London. The account did not exist and the cheque was a fraud.
Please pass this onto as many businesses as possible so that these little b******* in Dubai don't succeed.
