Up to 100 Irish businesses in 2022 were conned out of an average of €14,000 due to invoice fraud - totalling approximately €1.4million, new figures revealed.
As businesses change bank accounts, due to the exit of two major banks in Ireland, scammers are emailing suppliers with their own bank details purporting to be a client, asking the business to update payment details to the new account.
The scam is often not realised until a final notice, or late payment note arrives a month later.
It also revealed that Irish victims who fell for text message scams have lost an average of €1,700 in the first half of this year.
As fraud continues to soar across the country, research by FRAUDSMART indicates that scammers are raking in millions of euro each year from members of the public via 'smishing' crimes.
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More than 17,000 incidents of fraud have been recorded in the first three months of this year, up 88% on the same period in 2021, when 9,200 cases were recorded.
Smishing is a type of scam that involves an account holder receiving a text, purportedly from their bank. Attached to the message is a link which brings the victim to a cloned website.
The person is then asked to input their PIN, which allows the fraudsters to take control of their bank account.
In March, gardaí reported a 370% surge in fraud-related crimes within the space of 12 months. The latest statistics reveal that more people are falling victim to scammers as methods of deception become more sophisticated every year.
Niamh Davenport, who leads the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland's FRAUDSMART initiative, said they have seen text message scams almost double in the first half of this year.
"Fraudsters are experts at taking advantage of changing situations to commit fraud, and with two retail banks leaving the Irish market, hundreds of thousands of personal and business customers are moving bank accounts," she said.
FRAUDSMART has launched an awareness campaign urging the public to be on high alert for people pretending to come from their bank, utility company, mobile provider or even their HR department.
