GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Con artists send out fake invoices in hopes of tricking businesses, or individuals, into paying for services or products they never requested or received. Billions are lost each year to this scam, making it a con that should not be taken lightly.
On a PayPal account linked to my own personal email, I received two invoices to pay $199 for Norton Antivirus services this morning. However, they were billed to people named Caitlin and Stevens.
Another red flag? I’ve never used that software.
“Since the beginning of the year, we’ve received ten Scamtracker reports from Wisconsinites, really about the very same thing…We’ve had lots of people call and say ‘I don’t even get Norton’ or ‘I don’t even have a computer, why did I receive this bill?'” said Susan Bach of the Better Business Bureau. “They’re hoping that you don’t notice that you’re not really a customer and that you’ll just pay for it anyway or making it seem like you’re already a customer by sending you a bill. They’re hoping that you will just pay it and hand over your credit card information.”
Obviously, with the invoice addressed to the wrong person, it could prompt you to call that company back to inform them of the error.
“They’ll do something like ‘please confirm your credit card number’ or something like that, and that’s how they steal your credit card information,” Bach told WTAQ News. “They’re just hoping that one or two people bite and interact with them or reply to the message, and that’s they way they can hook you into revealing personal information…Don’t give in to that pressure like you owe money now. Just delete it.”
But the WTAQ News crew simply couldn’t resist. We called the numbers on both invoices. One seemed to be disconnected with an immediate dial-tone.
The other? We got a hold of ‘Daniel Tomlinson’ of ‘Norton’ to see what was up with the account.
“Thank you for reaching…uhh…Norton. How can I help you?”
To keep things even further removed, WTAQ’s Rob Sussman handled the call – and kept ‘Daniel’ on the line for nearly seven minutes.
While he didn’t request credit card details, our new friend who was ‘not exactly’ from Dehli, India did ask for remote access to the computer for us to ‘connect to the server’ so he could see if anyone had hacked the account. Clearly, that process was drawn out and access was never granted.
To learn more about recognizing potential invoicing scams, head to BBB.org.
Comments