Police warn of scammers who pose as procurement officers from local universities
Caryn Tan
Posted on 29 July 2019 | 2,493 views | 6 comments
The police have observed an emergence of a new variant of scams whereby scammers would pose as procurement officers from local universities and induce unsuspecting companies into delivering goods with promises of payments at a later date.
In such cases, the companies would receive e-mails purportedly sent by a procurement officer from a local university, asking for quotations for various items (mostly electronics and IT-related items).
The scammers would use emails bearing the template ‘procurement@___edu-sg.com’ to convince companies that they were genuine.
The following are some examples:
- procurement@sutdedu-sg.com (SUTD)
- procurement@nusedu-sg.com (NUS)
- Verify that the sender’s domain name is genuine when receiving emails and purchase orders. In such cases, the domain names closely resemble those used by the universities.
- Always verify the authenticity of the request by contacting the universities on their official contact numbers instead of the numbers provided in the email.
- Look out for tell-tale indicators that the email received might be a scam. Indicators such as grammatical or spelling errors, or delivery addresses that could be of a private residence, freight forwarding companies or a self-storage facility, rather than that of the university.
- Educate your employees on how to detect and protect the company from such scams.
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