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Texas businesses targeted by fraudulent invoice scams
Nothing seemed strange about a Xerox box of toner that arrived last year at the Adams and Boswell law office.
That
was until the Beaumont law firm received a $650 invoice for the product
from a company with a California address – Toner Express. Adams and
Boswell’s Xerox supplier is based in Dallas.”We refused to pay the
invoice,” operations manager Jeff Purcell said. “We started getting
phone calls from people who said they were from Xerox and they were
very unprofessional – you could tell they didn’t work for Xerox.”Paco
Felici, a spokesman from the state Attorney General’s office said scam
artists sometimes send fraudulent invoices to companies hoping the
accounts payable department will fail to confirm a purchase was made
and pay the bill.In the last few years, Felici said the attorney
general’s office has received 20 formal written complaints of similar
scams. They also receive numerous calls alerting the office of unwanted
solicitations.”It’s a long-ranging type of scam,” Felici said. “In the
past it used to involve primarily paper products and in recent years
it’s switched to pricier supplies like photocopier toner and inkjet
cartridges.”Texas law states that businesses that receive
unordered merchandise are under no obligation to pay to return the
unwanted product. It can be considered a gift, according to the news
release. The retailer that sent the merchandise can pay to retrieve it,
but seldom do.Purcell said Adams and Boswell’s chief shareholder, Kent
Adams, sent Toner Express a letter stating that, and the law firm never
heard from the company again.The Enterprise placed several calls on
Thursday to the number the Attorney General provided for Toner Express.
The phone rang multiple times with no answer and no voicemail picked up.
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