Fake invoices in circulation
Why it's worth examining carefully
Are you a customer of KD Web Design? Feel free to confidently reach out to us with any questions about received hosting invoices.
Frequently, our customers receive invoices or payment requests like the one discussed in this example. However, even in such cases, it is worth taking a closer look. After all, once a payment has been wrongly sent, it is difficult to recover.
For one thing, neither the company stated in the ‘invoice’ exists in Germany, nor is the named ‘invoice contact: Anna Meyer’ likely to be genuine. How would one even reach this supposed ‘Ms Meyer’?
In the description of services, an alleged ‘domain registration period’ is specified. This term could simply be a translation error: firstly, it should be written as ‘domain registration period’ (hyphenated), and secondly, a domain registration does not take an entire year.
A domain is registered only once with KD Web Design, and only costs for the hosting itself—i.e., the provision of computing power, storage space, and data transfer—may be charged.
Where does the invoice in this post come from?
The invoice shown here was sent to one of our customers by email.
The only correct details on this invoice are clearly the IBAN ES40 6888 0001 6886 6199 1582, which appears in two places, the invoice date, the due date, and the fabricated total amount of 279.00 euros.
The specified bank account is held with Olinda SAS Sucursal EN España or the online bank Qonto.com. Olinda SAS Bank is headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, and can be found here:
Plaza catalunya, 1, Barcelona, 08002, Barcelona
The online bank Qonto states its identity on its website as follows:
“Qonto is the trading name of OLINDA SAS (a simplified joint-stock company under French law), registered with the Paris Trade and Companies Register (No. 819 489 626), with its registered office at 18 rue de Navarin, 75009 Paris, France, and represented by its President, Steve Anavi, and CEO, Alexandre Prot. OLINDA SAS is a regulated payment institution authorised by the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR) (Licence No. 16958, issued on 21/06/2018).
In Germany, Qonto operates through the OLINDA German Branch (Warschauer Platz 11-13, 10245 Berlin), with Alexandre Prot as its Permanent Representative. It is registered in the Commercial Register of the Berlin (Charlottenburg) Local Court (HRB 213261 B) and is jointly supervised by the ACPR and the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin).”
Here you can perform an IBAN check yourself (link).
Conclusion
As briefly illustrated in this example, it can often be worthwhile taking a closer look at invoices and payment requests you receive.
If you have any questions about our invoices, please do not hesitate to contact us. You can find our contact details here (link).
Image: Fake invoice from “Web Domain Germany – Website & Hosting Service” with numerous embarrassing spelling mistakes, pretending not to be an invoice.
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