The newest scam that is doing the rounds is whereby a person’s email account is compromised in such a way that someone gains access to their email, gets a hold of an invoice that is due for payment, changes the banking detail on the invoice to reflect fraudulent banking detail.
The person in question (you) then innocently opens the email containing the invoice, pays the amount to the fraudulent banking account and your money is gone!
This, in turn, is not only your responsibility but also your bank. You have to be vigilant and always check or validate banking detail before doing a payment. Why I’m also blaming the banking industry is because of one reason. Bank account numbers are not validated against the vendor or account name before doing a payment.
Why is it that none of the banking institutions validates the account number against the account name? If I as a company or business register an account at the bank with a specific name, then surely that name must match up with my account number. Also, if I have a business or company, it’s my responsibility to print the exact account name on all my invoices. This, in turn, will make it possible for all banking institutions to force their clients to enter the correct account name because it will be by default, validated against the account number.
It is time that the banking industry also come to the table with better solutions to stop criminals from exploiting innocent victims.
This is an example (see image) from my online FNB account: (you will see on the marked section that the bank even say that they do not validate the name with the number. WHY?)
