Santander UK has issued a stark warning to businesses, urging them to be on "high alert" for impersonation scams. The bank revealed that the number of its customers targeted by fraudsters doubled last month.
The banking group explained that criminals are using clever tricks to pose as bank employees and con people into transferring thousands of pounds into a scammer's account.
It shared with the PA news agency that over 200 of its corporate and commercial banking customers were known to have been targeted in September.
The bank highlighted one case where a business customer was tricked out of a large sum of money after receiving a call from someone pretending to be a Santander staff member.
In these situations, scammers ring up a business and pretend to be from the company's bank, often claiming to be from the fraud or security department, and inform them that a "fraudulent payment" has been made from the company's bank account.
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The callers, who sometimes even provide a fake reference number or employee ID, direct the person to a phony website or phone number to sort out the issue.
They then either instruct or deceive them into installing a remote access system on their device, which gives the criminals access. One customer was instructed to install the app AnyDesk, according to Santander.
The customers are then told to log into their mobile banking and authorise a transaction that will supposedly stop the "fraudulent payment" from leaving the company's bank account.
Chris Ainsley, Santander UK's head of fraud risk management, warned in a chat with PA: "Impersonation scams are rampant and the criminals perpetrating these crimes can be particularly devious in their approach." He added: "Businesses should remain on high alert to this threat."
"Don't trust people who make an unsolicited call to you and say they are from your bank, and make sure you validate any requests from cold callers by hanging up and contacting your bank using the phone number on the back of your bank card." he advised.
A business customer, who wished to remain anonymous, shared a voice recording with PA that revealed an attempted scam by a caller pretending to be from the bank. The fraudster claimed to be from "Santander's business banking team" and said they had blocked a payment of more than £18,000, which the customer was asked to validate before being given a phone number to contact the "higher fraud department" to deal with the issue.
Santander emphasised that businesses should never share any passwords or security codes with anyone, not even a bank employee, nor allow anyone to remotely access their device. They also advised that people should only use a mobile app to authenticate a transaction they have selected themselves in online banking.
* An AI tool was used to add an extra layer to the editing process for this story. You can report any errors to webhomepage@mirror.co.uk
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