03.07.2018

UK fraud outbreak

Over the past week or two there have been several fraudulent attempts to rent/take aerial lifts and telehandlers.

In one case a criminal tried to pass himself off as RDF Building Ltd, with two different rental companies. Here are their explanations:

“We have had a customer claiming to be RDF Building Ltd wanting three machines for Burnley tomorrow. They filled the accounts form out with all the correct details for RDF and sent us hired in plant insurance with correct details. The only thing that caught him out was a Gmail email address and the fact he had only taken his insurance cover out today!”

“We have had a customer who claimed to be RDF Building Ltd and wanting four machines for two different sites, one in Halifax and one in Haslingden for tomorrow. They filled the accounts form out with all correct details for RFD and sent us the hired in plant insurance with correct details. The only reason that he was caught out was because I have just received an email from the CPA regarding the same company. I rung said company - RFD - and they confirmed that this man has been attempting to hire plant using their name for the past week. He used a Gmail email address and said the reason for this was the server was down at the moment, which didn’t sound strange at the time as our server was down too. His hired in plant insurance also only started on the 2nd July. He is going under the name Richard Walker and comes across very polite.”

In yet another case but with a man claiming to be from a different company: “We have received a credit account request from a guy claiming to be Martin Treanor of Cruden Construction Ltd. He has attempted to hire a few Diesel Booms for a site in Lancashire and we believe this request to be fraudulent. We contacted Cruden directly who have confirmed that this man has no connection to their company whatsoever.”

In another quite different case: “We have a 535-95 telehandler on hire in the Bedfordshire/Milton Keynes area. Our site contact has just informed us that a man in a car pulled up on site today saying that he was from XXX Plant services to carry out a test certificate on the machine. We do not have anyone on our staff that fits the description of the man and we hadn’t sent anyone to carry out the test as this machine’s certificate is in date until November 2018. We believe that this could be someone checking out the machine and the site before coming back to remove the machine from site.”

As always it pays to be vigilant and if it doesn’t smell right, it probably isn’t right. Thankfully in these four cases the criminals failed in their endeavours. And with customers warning others through their associations and the media perhaps we can stop some of these …………xx from succeeding, although what would be even better would be to catch and prosecute them.

Stay alert to fraud!