B2B Fraud: Skype scam sparks Tools for Brokers warning
While most financial scams target retail consumers, business-to-business (B2B) fraud has become increasingly common and businesses must pay attention to their practices if they want to avoid becoming victims themselves.
Tools for Brokers today sounded alarm bells as the software developer for FX brokers spotted a fraudulent scheme imitating their brand and even trying to extract money from their customers ‘through deception’.
“It has come to our attention that a fraudulent Skype account is reaching out to our clients and partners on the TFB support team’s behalf. The account is offering different services and sends out invoices for payment,” the company said in an email statement.
TFB warns that if anybody happens to come across these impostors online, they should exercise extreme caution, since customers could be convinced to put their money into fraudulent ploys, never seeing it ever again.
“The support team never sends invoices to clients or reaches out to promote TFB solutions, so please beware of scammers,” it added.
Tools for Brokers said its warning comes amid increasing concerns over the prevalence of clone scams as criminals seek to take advantage of social confusion.
B2B fraud isn’t new, but with more at stake companies are less keen to talk about being caught out which is why the scale of the problem is only just being realised.
While this sort of B2B fraud isn’t as unusual as most of us might think, but it can take many forms, including account fake yellow-page listing invoices, business identity theft and even shell companies set up for the sole purpose of committing fraud. Scam artists sometimes use business names that closely resemble genuine companies.
FX brokers are among those that have been targeted by rogue operators who clone their names and websites in an attempt to part unsuspecting investors from their cash.
Fortunately, with a combination of deep risk expertise and the right technological tools, B2B companies can protect themselves from fraud.
Earlier in March, we asked Alexey Kutsenko, Founder and CEO of Tools For Brokers (TFB), if he agrees that some brokers sometimes tend to overlook risk management tools.
In his reply, Alexey noted that as brokers go multi-asset nowadays, they increasingly need a comprehensive suite of risk management tools that delivers consistent, consolidated results across their entire business.
“Risk management is one of the top questions right now, because all brokers think about that, especially when they start to offer multi-asset trading. They have to be more skilled in risk management in different areas, because the process in forex is totally different compared to, for example, crypto,” he added.
Established in 2009, Tools for Brokers provides software solutions to brokerage firms in foreign exchange and cryptocurrency trading. The company is also a provider of a money management solution PAMM, a data management and reporting product Broker Business Intelligence (BBI), and White Label.
