The criminal requests an electronic payment for such help, which is never given. Counseling: The taxpayer is contacted by the fraudster who poses as an official of the Ministry of Finance and offers to be an “adviser” to configure the electronic invoice appropriately.
Verification of accounts: The victim receives a phone call from a supposed official of the Ministry of Finance (with respect to the electronic invoice) and asks for personal and/or corporate and banking information to “help” the taxpayer to enter their account and verify the status of “connection” with the Treasury system to consult the amounts of the payment of taxes.
Ransomware: The attachment to the emails activates malicious code that, when opened, allows the fraudsters to demand payment in exchange to get back information.The data is then used to send to others invoices that seem official, making it more credible and expand their contact base. Falsification: The fraudster sends an email asking the victim to fill out a form in order to complete the invoices.How can you detect that you are facing an electronic invoice scam?Įither by telephone or email, there are five main scams to be aware of: “At the beginning of last year we began to see the impact of a combination of low education (of cybercrime) of users, a population that was not prepared to start in electronic invoicing, even many did not what one looked like, nor did they know the process of creating an account … All this giving rise to a niche in electronic fraud,” explained Esteban Jiménez, founder of ATTI CyberLabs told El Financiero. Now with the use of electronic invoicing, the risks increase. The most common complaints filed with the OIJ are scams involving credit or debit cards and its use online, fraud with a card without consent and computer scams. Once the attachment is clicked on, there is no turning back.Ĭriminals take advantage of the lack of knowledge that still exists in relation to electronic invoicing and with the help of “phishing” – a social engineering technique – the victim is tricked into revealing personal and/or company information.ĭata from the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) reveals that in 2017, 1,042 complaints were filed and in 2018 the number increase, 1,286 up to November 28. Or is it one the mass emails making its way around the web containing a malicious program that will infect your computer and steal sensitive information an/or demand a ransom for its return. Did you really make the purchase? Why are you getting a bill for it? For example, it could be a receipt for your cellular phone. However, it is not exclusive to the business world and anyone, even you, can be victim. Although targeting mainly accounting and human resources departments of business, whose employees would proceed normally to open the attachment to verify the payment.