We have been informed of a type of telephone scam, using the “vishing” method - fraud committed through a telephone call, deceiving the victim by impersonating a trusted third party.

This scam, for the moment, has only been detected in several catering companies on the Costa Brava that are in full activity during the summer (August), but it could have different variants in other business activities.

The scam is as follows:

• An employee of the company receives a call.
• The perpetrator of the scam pretends to be someone from the company (usually a senior manager) and gives the full name of the person in charge of the company to whom they call.
• They do this at a time and on days when they are busy – for example, on Fridays or weekends, when it is difficult to verify the information.
• They say that they will receive a call from a courier company to deliver an order.
• This call from a supposed courier company is received and they explain that, in order to receive what is expected, the employee must make several outstanding payments.
• If this employee falls into the trap, the scammer indicates different ways of making the payment (for example: providing a bank account number where they must make the payment by bank transfer, buying payment cards at a tobacconist or at the post office).
• If a payment is made, after a few minutes the scammer calls the employee again asking for more money with the excuse that there was still something else to pay or that the first payment was wrong.
• These people are very persistent, they know information about the company they want to scam and they call several times.