The European Commission has recently sent out communication to users of its Funding & Tender Opportunities Portal (FTOP) warning them about phishing attempts and fraudsters impersonating project partners to try to deviate payments on Horizon projects.
The following message from the Horizon Grants communication team has been sent out:
“Dear Beneficiary,
We would like to warn project coordinators and grant beneficiaries of fake phishing emails seemingly coming from beneficiaries, requesting payment of the pre-financing or intermediate payments to a bank account that is not the one of the real beneficiary. Such email addresses look very similar to the real ones but are being used by fraudsters.
To avoid becoming a victim of such fraud, please keep in mind the following:
- Always verify the transmission of bank account data (or changes to such data) of a beneficiary to whom you make payments via a second channel, with a trusted person at the beneficiary, in particular if the information comes via e-mail (that is easy to fake)
- Do not make any financial transaction unless you are certain of the bank account of the recipient
- Do not reply to fraudulent communication and ignore phishing messages
- Do not provide any personal information
- Inform your Granting Authority immediately”
We strongly recommend that subscribers follow the Commission’s advice and report any phishing attempts to the relevant Granting Authority so that the fraudsters’ accounts on FTOP can be blocked.