A new range of highly sophisticated invoice scams are being aimed at Island firms as fraudsters use the freely available resources of international AI providers to compose entirely fictitious chains of emails which purport to show that a named – and known – company representative has been corresponding with a supposed supplier. 

welovestornoway.com ran a test using a well-known AI provider’s free service and simply asked for an example of a four-email exchange between our own company and an unnamed training provider.  

Within seconds, an utterly convincing thread of emails emerged using a company name, which the AI service had cheerfully invented, along with a named respondent and their precise position in the fictitious company 

This followed receipt by our accounts team of a cleverly contrived email exchange and a completely fake invoice which the screen-grabbed email exchange was supposed to validate. 

These types of emails have been around for years – including some very convincing HMRC fakes which used to be very common at this time of year.  But now hard-pressed members of a busy finance department may have to contend with emails which appear to come from someone they actually know and which contain conversational support for the recording and payment of an attached invoice. 

 

Â