The Fake Invoice That Nearly Cost My Business Thousands

As a small business owner, I rely on a number of vendors and suppliers to keep things running smoothly. With a busy schedule and multiple invoices coming in each month, it’s easy to miss a detail here and there. One day, I received an invoice that looked completely legitimate — the logo and formatting were professional, and it was from a supplier I had worked with before. The invoice requested payment for a recent delivery, so without giving it a second thought, I made the payment.

A few weeks later, I got a call from the actual supplier, asking about an outstanding invoice that had gone unpaid. Confused, I told them I had already paid it. They had no record of the payment I mentioned. That’s when I realized that the invoice I had paid wasn’t from them at all — it was a fake. Scammers had created an invoice that mimicked my real supplier’s documents, complete with their branding and details, and sent it to me at just the right time.

By the time I understood what had happened, the scammer had already collected my payment and vanished. I was out several thousand dollars, and there was little I could do to recover the funds. It was a hard lesson in the importance of verifying every single invoice, no matter how legitimate it seems.

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