Clients scammed by hackers
A Pleasant Point business has been hit by hackers who intercepted its invoices prompting clients to deposit money into foreign bank accounts.
Kerry O’Rourke, a part-owner in South Canterbury’s O’Rourke Brothers Taxidermy, said what he wanted to do to the hackers who had tried to trick his foreign clients was probably not legal.
So far only one of O’Rourke’s clients has been sucked into the scam, losing ‘‘probably about €2000 (NZ$3551) into an account’’.
‘‘We first realised something was amiss with our emails when we got rung up by an English client who we were sending some mounts to. He had paid his money into an English Building Society account supposedly that we’d sent him, which we hadn’t sent him.
‘‘It probably wouldn’t be legal to do what I want to do to them. It’s a thing you can’t do anything about until it’s happened.’’
O’Rourke said his reaction was to immediately alert the rest of his overseas clients.
‘‘We got in contact with all our other foreign clients. Some of them have been approached [by the hackers]. Our emails have been intercepted and reconstructed giving them Russian bank accounts. So it’s a network that’s fairly global thievery,’’ he said.
O’Rourke said he was still to hear from some overseas clients who have been sent invoices. Despite only one customer being defrauded so far, he believed the damage could have been worse.
‘‘There’s only one other we haven’t heard from yet.’’