Beware of QuickBooks Scams this Tax Season

Many small and mid-sized companies use Intuit’s QuickBooks program. One of the program’s features is sending customers invoices via email. The payee can click on a “Review and pay” button in the email to pay the invoice.

Unfortunately, phishing criminals use QuickBooks’ popularity to send business email compromise (BEC) scams. The emails appear to be coming from a legitimate vendor using QuickBooks, but if the potential victim takes the bait, the invoice they pay will be to the scammer. Worse, the payment request can require that the payee use ACH (automated clearing house) method, which requires the payee to input their bank account details. So, if the victim falls for the scam, the criminal now has their bank account information. Not good.

The fake QuickBooks’ payment emails look very similar to legitimate emails. Here are some red flags you can look for to determine if the email is from a legitimate sender:

• Do you recognize the company sending the email? If not, it could be a scam.
• Do the links in the email take you to the same site the email content says it will? If not, the email could be malicious.
• Does the email tell you to click a link or open an attachment? Not every attachment or link is malicious. However, this can be another clue that the email is fraudulent.
• Does the email create a sense of urgency? If so, it could have been sent from a cybercriminal. Be sure to slow down, evaluate what the email is asking and always think before you click.

Keep in mind that email invoices sent from QuickBooks arrive from intuit.com. The scam ones usually do not.

Other QuickBooks Scams

• Fraudulent calls pretending to be QuickBooks support agents asking you to renew the license
• Fraudulent emails claiming to be QuickBooks’ emergency security updates
• Emails about supposed pricing discounts

Intuit has a list of known phishing scams here.

Protect Your Organization

Millions of people and businesses use QuickBooks to run their business with tons of customers used to receiving and paying QuickBooks-generated email invoices. If it is an unexpected QuickBooks-generated email invoice, check the email header to see if it originated from intuit.com or not. Or contact the involved vendor using a trusted alternate method to verify before paying.

Yeo & Yeo Technology offers email protection solutions with features like email filtering, cloud backup and incident response technology. We can also help train your employees to identify malicious emails with our security awareness training and testing. Contact us to learn more.

Information in this article was provided by our partners at KnowBe4.