Email conmen pretend to be Archbishop to scam clergy
SCAMMERS posing as church officials including the Archbishop of York have targeted clergy asking them to buy online vouchers and gift cards.
There have been recent close calls, the Diocese of York said, including one church office holder who spent “quite a lot” of their own money, before the scam was discovered just in time.
In a warning posted online, the Dio- cese of York said it was monitoring the scams and had reported them to the police. Some fake messages have been identified by the use of incorrect titles, The Times reported. In one example, missives signed “Rev Stephen Cottrell” were outed as not being genuine because his true title is “Most Rev Stephen Cottrell”, according to the paper.
The first message of the scams often uses a phase such as “Are you free at the moment?” or “Do you have a moment? I have a request I need you to handle discreetly. I am currently busy in a prayer session. No calls so just reply my email.”
Once the intended victim replies, scammers often ask them to buy vouchers or gift cards online, which they promise will be reimbursed. “The sender has taken some trouble both with identifying their chosen pseudo-sender and the intended victim (we guess someone is trawling church websites),” the Diocese of York warns.
“In many cases the sender has used an un-traceable gmail address, or texted from an equally un-traceable pay-asyou-go (or ‘burner’) mobile phone. It seems this is a national trend at present
with similar reports from other Dioceses, and we have reported one specimen case to North Yorkshire Police who have passed it over to Action Fraud.”
A similar series of scams was reported in 2020, with victims asked to buy online gift cards as thank you presents for members of the church community.
In 2019 GCHQ said it had seen a sharp rise in phishing emails using the details of real law firms and churches.