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.

The email copied below was recently sent to a Scamicide reader and appears to come from U.S. Tech Support, a legitimate tech support company.   As always, the purpose of a phishing email is to lure you into clicking on links contained within the email or providing personal information, in this case by phone if you call to dispute the phony bill . Often if you click on links in phishing emails, you end up downloading malware and if you provide the requested information, it ends up being used to make you a victim of identity theft. This particular phishing email provides a phone number to call if you wish to dispute the obviously phony invoice.  If you call the number in the phishing email you will be asked for personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft.

There are a number of red flags that indicate that this is a scam, most notably that the email was sent from an email address that appears to have nothing to do with U.S. Tech Support, but was most likely the email address of someone whose email had been hacked and made a part of a botnet used to send out these phony phishing emails while preserving the anonymity of the cybercriminal.

Here is a copy of the invoice being circulated.  I have deleted the name of the Scamicide reader to whom the email was sent.