It has become apparent that over the past year there has been a sharp increase in payment fraud involving classic and specialist vehicles. Hackers have identified traders who are obviously dealing in very high value vehicles and have hacked into their emails.
They have followed the negotiations around the sale of an expensive car and when one party requests details of the bank account to which the money should be transferred they move immediately to insert false bank account details. In one incident recently money was transferred to a household name bank in London but within 15 minutes it was moved on to China and gone.
Cyber insurance is relatively new and the cover is more related to costs incurred from loss of data and cash losses are not covered. The answer, whether a trader or collector, is not to transfer money on the strength of email details but to ring the recipient and verify bank account details before transferring money.
