A “phishing” scam that targets businesses, convincing human resources and finance departments to redirect paychecks into the pockets of fraudsters, is causing concern for Saskatoon police.
Police say the scam involves using professional looking emails that appear to come from an employee in a position of authority.
The emails aim to convince recipients to alter direct deposit information so that paychecks end up in an account controlled by the scammer.
According to police, the fraudsters use free email services such as Gmail to create accounts using the name of the high-ranking employees they wish to pose as.
Police say because the emails appear to come from a trusted individual and the messages lack spelling and grammatical errors, they often slip by security filters meant to catch suspicious emails.
Police are advising anyone who receives an email like this, to obtain further verification before making changes to an employee’s payroll information, to save the suspicious file and file a police report.
