UKC

Quick heads-up...

Our club treasurer got an email earlier today purporting to be from the president (on his personal email address), asking her to make an urgent transfer of £900 from the club account. On closer inspection it turned out to be nothing of the sort - it sounds like a scammer had spoofed the headers to fake the "from" address.

Whoever it is has clearly put a bit of effort into this, since the president's personal email isn't publicized on the website. I'm not sure whether they're specifically targeting mountaineering clubs, but I thought it might be worth mentioning it on here as a warning in case they are.

In reply to Ramblin dave:

Our club had the same last year. Fortunately our system is set up in a way that means there isn't actually an email address of the format they spoofed, so it was spotted quickly. Definitely something to warn presidents and treasurers about (although our scam also specified an urgent £900 transfer, so maybe just don't authorise urgent £900 transfers!)

In reply to label:

This is an almost weekly occurrence in the business world and some are more convincing than others. As usual, the advice of checking anything which looks odd / was unexpected follows. Just make sure you phone whoever the e-mail purports to be from rather than replying to the fake.

I usually let it run until I've got their bank details so I can get our bank's fraud team to shut it down. At least if they're inconvenienced it may slow them down but they'll always win somewhere along the line with the volume they go for.

In reply to Ramblin dave:

They'd have no chance from our club, an urgent £900 transfer would probably need a 3 hour committee meeting followed by an EGM