The Small Business Development Corporation is today warning small business operators to be wary of overseas scammers targeting Australian businesses.
Acting managing director, Jacky Finlayson, says the latest prosecutions made by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission lays clear the hazards of failing to properly maintain cashflow systems.
Ms Finlayson says the latest scammers from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom misled hundreds of Australian companies into thinking they were dealing with the Australian company Sensis Yellow Pages.
"Scammers like this send bogus invoices purporting to be for services rendered, and businesses that are either too busy to check, or without a reliable cashflow system in place, are needlessly paying out large sums of money," Ms Finlayson said.
According to the ACCC, the overseas companies made false, misleading and deceptive representations about online directory business services in breach of sections 52 and 53 of the Trade Practices Act 1974.
Ms Finlayson says the importance of a sound cashflow system cannot be underestimated.
"If businesses of all sizes kept a clear, reliable system that documents credits, debits and the details of all outstanding invoices, then life would be much harder for scammers," Ms Finlayson said.
