Over the weekend Guernsey Law Enforcement received a copy of an unsolicited invoice from what appears to be a legitimate UK registered company, ‘Children Information Centre’ which provides ‘Stay Safe’ booklets to schools.
The unsolicited invoice was sent to a local company; however the local company had not agreed to purchase any booklets.
The local company was initially contacted by a representative of the Children Information Centre, who claimed that several months ago a member of the local company’s staff agreed to purchase the booklets on behalf of a local school. The local company denied agreeing to purchase the booklets. The representative of the Children Information Centre, appeared to have done their homework and was able to name a school close to the local company and then attempted to pressure them into paying the invoice by claiming that the booklets had been printed with the Local company’s details on as the sponsor.
On-line checks suggest that the company ‘Children Information Centre’ uses sharp tactics in order to get recipient companies to pay the invoices, by claiming that the recipient company verbally agreed to purchase the books on behalf of a school, the invoice does not say which school the booklets were purchased for or how many booklets were being purchased.
Advice from Law Enforcement is if a local company or individual receives either an unsolicited invoice from the company ‘Children Information Centre’ or an unsolicited call from them, then they should not engage with the company, also ignore the invoice and not to pay any money.
If you think you have fallen for a scam, in the first instance contact your bank immediately and report it to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or via actionfraud.police.uk. You can also contact the Guernsey Police on 725111 or via fraud@guernsey.pnn.police.uk and Trading standards via scams@gov.gg or tradingstandards@gov.gg.
