The phony invoice scam is a common scam popular with scammers because it is quite effective.  It starts when you receive an email that purports to be from a popular company with which many of us do business that indicates that you owe them a significant payment.   The scammers count on people being concerned that they are being wrongfully charged for a product they did not order.  You are provided a telephone number to call if you dispute the bill. If you call the number, you will be prompted to provide personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft.  Here is a copy of the phony invoice presently being circulated.

TIPS

There are a number of red flags that indicate that this is a scam.  Your name does not appear anywhere in the invoice.  Only your email address appears in the phony invoice.  Also, the email was sent from an email address that appears to be that of Norton Security while the invoice is for software from McAfee, which in the phony invoice is misspelled as Mc-A-fee.  Finally, as with many phishing emails that originate in countries where English is not the primary language, there are numerous grammatical errors.

Once, I received a large invoice from a company with which I do business for goods I did not order, but rather than click on the link provided in the email, I went directly to the company’s website to question the invoice.  When the website came up, the first thing I saw was a large announcement that the invoice was a scam and that many people had received these phony invoices.  If you ever receive a phony invoice such as this and you think that it may possibly be true, don’t click on links or call phone numbers provided in the email.  Rather contact the real company directly at a phone number or website that you know is legitimate where you can confirm that the phishing invoice was a scam.

For those of you receiving the Scam of the day through an email, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the ever increasing list of Coronavirus scams go to the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website and click on the tab at the top of the page that indicates “Coronavirus Scams.”  Scamicide was recently cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.

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