Police investigating suspected fraud targeting Just Eat accounts
Police are investigating several reports of fraud affecting food outlets in Northern Ireland, with one takeaway owner claiming he lost £9,750.
The businesses have reported that expected payments from delivery platform Just Eat were not being received, alleging that bank details were changed by scammers with payments going to fraudulent accounts. One business reported losing up to £10,000 in four weeks. Police said enquiries were continuing.
Joe Morgan, owner of Nemo's fish & chips in Belfast, said he received a suspicious phone call claiming to be from Just Eat at the end of December, which he hung up on.
After not seeing the anticipated funds in his account by January, however, when he rang Just Eat he was told the money had been deposited in his account – only to find his bank details had been changed, with around £9,750 lost.
"We're not a large company, we're a family-owned fish and chip shop," he told The Caterer. "We're not made of money. That money would have carried us over into February. I had to go and borrow money to replace that. I still have to pay wages."
He said he would not have shared his login details out and the business was now having to deal with "the quietest January we've ever had".
Michael Henderson, director of the Northern Ireland Takeaway Association, said he had been contacted by three members at the beginning of January regarding missed payments by Just Eat reporting similar experiences, with an estimated £15,000 lost across the three outlets.
Henderson said: "A lot of our members now claim that they are getting fraudulent phone calls from people saying they are from Just Eat and asking for their bank details and their login details, there's been an uptick in that in the last few weeks in Northern Ireland."
Superintendent Gerard Pollock, chair of ScamwiseNI, said: "We would encourage anyone who may have had similar encounters of this nature to contact police, or to report these incidents to Action Fraud and make your bank aware.
"We would always urge people to contact the company the person are proclaiming to be from directly, via an independently sourced phone number before speaking to them any further."
A Just Eat spokesperson said: "We take the safeguarding of restaurant accounts on the Just Eat platform extremely seriously. We continually review our security measures and always advise restaurant partners to be vigilant about their online security and recommend that they use unique passwords for different online platforms."
Cybersecurity expert Graham Cluley said: "If your restaurant is relying heavily income on payments from delivery companies then it's essential that you ensure that the payment details you have lodged with them are correct, and have not been tampered with.
"Many of these payment settings are configured online, and so it's vital that restaurants are using unique, strong, and hard-to-crack passwords and that the delivery service themselves offer additional security measures (such as multi-factor authentication) to ensure that accounts are properly hardened against attacks from hackers."
Anyone concerned they have been a victim of a scam are urged to report the matter to Action Fraud via their website www.actionfraud.police.uk or by phoning 0300 123 2040. Henderson also urged any takeaways that were concerned they may have been a victim of fraud to contact the Northern Ireland Takeaway Association.
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