Reseller flags fraud attempt from fake university buyer

University says it is aware of a fake buyer trying to fool suppliers

Manchester-based reseller Green Cloud IT has sounded the alarm after receiving an order from a fraudulent IT buyer.

The email sender claimed to be an employee of the University of Birmingham and was seeking to buy a MacBook, hard drive and memory.

Suspicions were raised based on the email addresses domain name, which read "birminghams-ac.uk", according to Green Cloud sales director Liam Kefford.

"A couple of things caught my eye," he said.

"It was a PO enquiry in the subject line. It came through to our sales address so that caught my eye because I couldn't remember submitting one to the University of Birmingham.

"The other thing is that they put all their business details (company number and VAT number) in their email signature, which not a lot of businesses do.

"I went on the university website and the phone numbers were different, but the fax numbers were the same, so alarm bells started to ring."

Kefford said he phoned the university's procurement team who said that an employee with the same name worked in their department, but that the email was fake. The university's domain name is also incorrect in the email.

The university said it was already aware of this particular fraudster. CRN called the hoax phone number and spoke to someone claiming to be the university employee, despite us relaying the university's claims to him.

Kefford said that the fraudulent buyer pushed to complete the order after the order email came in.

"He came back yesterday afternoon checking if we had received the order, asking if we could advise on the next steps," he explained.

"He said that if we sent a quote he would place the order. It wasn't the hardest one to start because it just didn't ring true.

"It is the first one we have seen in a long time, though, and we don't get them often."