An international charity was recently contacted by an alleged donor wishing to gift a large quantity of second-hand laptops for their education work in Africa. The alleged donor spoke to the charity and had researched the charity well, so appeared genuine.

Initially, the alleged donor said they would cover shipment costs but subsequently asked the charity for a cash transfer to the donor so they could afford to make this payment. The charity refused but agreed to settle the costs directly with the shipment company.

A few days later, the charity was told the laptops were at Nairobi airport and they received an invoice to pay import duties of over US$1,000 immediately or additional storage costs would be charged.

Luckily, the charity’s internal controls required verification of the supplier’s bank details and it soon became apparent that the donation was in fact a fraud attempt. This charity’s procedures stopped the fraud attempt in its tracks, but would your charity have paid the invoice?

Please remember to review your internal controls regularly (the Charity Commission’s CC8 checklist is a great tool for this!) and remain vigilant.

If you want to share your own experience of being targeted with the Community, please send it to me by email (we will anonymise it).