Beware of online fraud targetting community organisations and small businesses.

Today we were contacted by a concerned member of the public who had just paid for a stall at the Mirfield Community Centre Christmas Fair, 2-3 December. Except that our Christmas Fair is on 26 November and all the stalls are sold out. They had seen the post in a local Facebook group and contacted the poster via Messenger. As admin on our Facebook page, I started to investigate. The post is highly plausible, they have our name and address correct and the rest of the text reads very like any appeal for stallholders might. But on clicking the poster’s page, there are no details on their profile and the name of the poster does not match the URL in the browser bar. I contacted the admin of the local group, reported the post and it was taken down.

I decided to search further and found multiple posts by this fake profile in numerous community groups, not only local to West Yorkshire, but all over the country. Each time the text was similar, but always included an organisation local to where the community was based. Some groups had clearly spotted the scam, but many have not. Here’s the gist of the kind of text I found:

Our Annual Christmas Fayre is coming closer And we need stall holders for this big event held on 2nd and 3rd December at £40 each.

Location: [Name and address of a local community group, church, venue]

Set up Time: 8:00am -10.00am

Event Time:10:00am-5:00pm

We need a food traders for the event, also expect sweets, chocolate and fudge, wax melts, candles, resin, crochet, crystals. (We are open to anything, the more unique the better)

If interested, PM indicating what you sell and whether indoors or outdoors.

Please note we are unable to reply to individual comments on this post but all PMs will be replied too.

For some reason commenting might be turned off. 

Be warry of current scams in the market.

I then called Action Fraud. Here’s their advice:

If you are a victim of this kind of fraud, please report it. A version of this scam has targetted multiple small businesses and community organisations in the UK. If it’s a version of the message above referencing Mirfield Community Centre you can connect by sharing the Action Fraud Crime reference number: NFRC231006216595. You can file a report online or call them on 0300 123 2040. When many people report the investigators can start to put together a case.
If you are an individual or small business always contact us directly, our contact details are on the website and we are always happy to speak to people on the phone or meet if you are not sure.

Further ways to protect yourself:

• Double check with an organisation directly to confirm that an event is legitimate and speak to someone in person via an independently sourced means of contact.
• Always use ‘pay a business’ not ‘Friends and Family’ on PayPal. Only use the latter ‘if the person is standing in front of you’, to quote the advice from Action Fraud.
• Learn about how these scams operate – there’s a good outline of similar schemes in this post on Action Fraud.

Please share this message in community groups where you are a member.

PS we will be sharing more information about our actual Christmas Fair on 26 November in the next few days.