Two Huddersfield firms have spoken out after fraudsters tried to con their customers out of thousands of pounds.

Now the firms are warning other businesses to double check the authenticity of emails and letters purporting to come from suppliers notifying them of a change in bank details.

Letters supposedly from Oakes-based distribution firm The Pink Link Ltd were sent to its customers advising them of a change of bank details and saying that in future payments to the firm should be made in accordance with the new details.

A letterhead bearing an out-of-date company logo was used alongside the company’s real address and phone number. The letters gave NatWest Bank account numbers and sort codes which do not belong to The Pink Link Ltd and closed with a forged signature for sales and commercial director Vicki Davenport – although it wrongly titled her “head of finance”.

Vicki Davenport of Pink Link

In a separate scam, an email supposedly from Brockholes-based Burton Safes business partner Ben Lewis was sent to a customer in the south of England thanking them for their order and requesting payment of £24,000 to be paid into a NatWest account.

Joint managing director Jeremy Elson said Burton Safes had not changed its bank details and the sum of £24,000 bore no relation to any pending transaction with the customer.

In both cases, the frauds only came to light after vigilant customers contacted the firms to double check that the changes in bank details was correct. The incidents have been reported to police.

Vicki said: “We rang a lot of our customers within the hour when we found out about it. I know of a dozen big customers who received the letters.

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“It was on the day before Easter and obviously the fraudsters thought that with people on holiday someone covering in the customers’ accounts department would make the changes in the bank details and payments would then go out. It could have been a disaster.

“Four of our customers who received the email changed the bank details on their system because they thought it was genuine. We sent a letter to every single customer – about 300 of them – on the Tuesday after Easter to alert them to the fraud. It was a costly and time-consuming exercise.”

Jeremy Elson, joint managing director of Burtonsafes

Mr Elson said: “We don’t know how they knew the business relationship between ourselves and our customer. Maybe they saw something on social media or picked something up from the customer’s website. They did a bit of research. Our IT staff have checked to make sure that our system hasn’t been hacked.”

He said: “We took the precaution of contacting our top 20 customers immediately then got a production line going to get letters out to all our customers, almost 1,000 of them.”

Det Insp Ben McDonald, of West Yorkshire Police’s Economic Crime Unit, said: “Sadly, these types of scams can be quite common and we would always advise businesses to be vigilant.

“If businesses receive letters or email communications advising them of a change of payment details we would always advise them to contact their bank directly, either by landline or secure email using the contact details they already know as advertised by their branch. Businesses should always make these checks before transferring any money.”