A scam pattern that has been working since the 1990s sent another batch of fake invoices to Georgia small businesses this week. The Elbert County Sheriff’s Office warned local employers on June 22 that suspicious faxes are landing in accounts-payable trays asking for $358.80. The amount is oddly specific on purpose. A round $360 reads as a made-up fee. $358.80 reads like real invoice math.
The fake invoices follow a tidy script. They are addressed to "ATTN: Accounts Payable" rather than to a named person. They claim the business owes an annual fee for either a "Secure Fax Routing Service" or a "Delivery Confirmation Add-On." Neither service was ever ordered. Pay the invoice and you have wired money to a stranger for something that does not exist.
Why fax is the perfect channel for this trick
Fax has a quiet advantage over email when you are running a scam. An email invoice has to get past a spam filter, a security gateway, and a recipient who deletes anything unfamiliar. A fax skips all of that. There is no "forward to IT" button on a thermal printout, no link to hover over, no automatic security warning. The cover sheet looks the same whether it came from the company’s real software vendor or a P.O. box in another state. By the time anyone notices the service does not exist, the check has cleared.
The same scam, with a new cover story
Fake fax invoice fraud is not new. The Federal Trade Commission has published guidance on fake invoice and listing scams since the 1990s. Back then the same playbook ran on yellow-pages listings and "domain renewal" notices sent by mail. Some versions of this scheme arrive by email too. What changes is the cover story, not the trick. Plenty of small businesses pay real fees for fax routing or delivery confirmation. A $358.80 line item for one looks believable to a busy clerk who sees dozens of invoices a day.
Elbert County is not unusual either. Sheriff’s offices and Better Business Bureau chapters across the country publish near-identical warnings every few months. The town changes; the invoice does not.
What to do if one of these lands
The clearest tell is the address line. A real vendor knows who pays them, so "ATTN: Accounts Payable" with no named contact is almost always a stranger fishing for a check. Verify the company before paying anything. The FTC accepts reports of invoice scams at reportfraud.ftc.gov, and the Elbert County Sheriff’s Office wants to hear about local cases.
Businesses that have already moved off a physical fax line tend to skip this whole kind of fraud. When you send fax from computer instead of running an inbound fax printer, the invoice has nowhere to land.