Beware this hire scam
15 March 2021
Here’s a warning about a nasty fraudulent hire scam. A tool and equipment hirer told me that his company was a victim of it recently and has lost a lot of kit.
I obviously won’t name the hirer, but he runs a very highly regarded business, and he wants to warn others.
In a nutshell, bogus callers phone to hire equipment but can make out they are using someone else’s number. So they appear completely genuine and avoid initial suspicion.
“It’s also disturbing because whoever did it was posing as one of our long-established customers and must have known more details about the company than just their phone number,” a director of the hire business told me.
“We have caller ID display on our landline phones and our mobiles. When the fraudster rang, it came up as the office number for a ground works contractor who we’ve dealt with for years.
“Apparently you can download fake caller ID software and apps from the Internet, which some people use to make prank calls and wind up their friends. They key in the number of the person they want to impersonate and away they go. They think it’s funny.
“The fraudster called one of our depots and ordered a lot of equipment to collect. As bad luck would have it, the manager was off sick with the coronavirus and his assistant was in charge, under pressure and, to give him credit, was trying to be as helpful as possible.
“The bogus caller pretended that two new ground work sites were opening up, quoted a realistic order number and reeled off all the equipment they wanted. He even mentioned the name of a guy we knew who worked for the company, so they’d done their research. Anyway, they duly collected the equipment.
“They called back a few hours later for more kit, and the same the next day. An experienced hire person might have already sensed this was too good to be true and would have got suspicious, but our enthusiastic assistant was pleased he’d been able to help the customer.
“However, the following day they tried on the same scam at one of our other depots where the manager is very experienced and knows his customers. Again, when the criminal rang, the ground works contractor’s name and number were displayed but our manager smelt a rat – they were asking for kit that they normally wouldn’t need.
“So our manager went along with it and said he’d get the kit ready for the customer to collect. As soon as he put the phone down, his next call was to the ground works contractor who confirmed that they had ordered nothing. He then phoned me and I raced over with some colleagues, phoning the police on the way who turned up and stopped the driver when he appeared.
“His truck had the same number as the one captured on CCTV at our other depot, and the police arrested him.”
It turned out that the driver was simply a fall guy who had been recruited by the real fraudsters to pick up the equipment on their behalf, so that they were distanced from the theft. The police hope he will eventually identify them, but the sad fact is that the kit is long gone.
So, beware. This is a nasty scam that preys on a hirer’s willingness to help. And it proves the old saying that if something looks too good to be true, then it probably is.
Photo: Mikhail Nilov/Pexels
