Fraudsters are coming up with more and more creative ways to scam.
As recently reported in the media, UK Police and Action Fraud have registered scams totalling £34.5 million since 1 March 2020. The UK is receiving over 20% of the global malicious spam emails with ‘coronavirus’ in the subject field. Fraudsters are undaunted and unphased by the human suffering of the pandemic. Their interest is purely financial. Malicious emails can include hot topics such as vaccine and personal protective equipment.
Ignoring fraud won’t make mitigate the risk, it only takes a single case of fraud to cause severe damage and these attacks can take multiple forms, for example invoice diversion, money laundering, corruption, unauthorized fundraising, cyber-attacks, and the list goes on…
The consequences could be really discouraging and impactful to our causes. Beyond the financial damage (USD 5.1 trillion was the cost of fraud in 2019) we have the negative reputational impact fraud has on our organisations on the long-term, this is harder to measure but it may affect the donor’s confidence in us, and it delays turning the cause into reality – which is our primary goal.
