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Scam Fraudulent Purchase Orders

The ����Թ� Procurement department would like to alert the community to a nationwide fraud scam that is targeting suppliers for colleges across the country. Please take precautions so that you are not a victim of this scam.

The email scam involves purchase orders and requests for product quotations that purport to originate from the University, but are in fact fraudulent. The FBI could be involved.

According to multiple schools, the emailer requests quotes for specific merchandise. This activity includes the impersonation of University employees that hold purchasing authority. Later, a purchase order is emailed to the business that bears resemblance to an official University purchase order. The purchase order instructs delivery to an address not affiliated with the University.

After shipping the merchandise, the business never receives payment and is unable to retrieve the mailed products.

While we cannot prevent this illegal activity, we want to promote awareness and communicate the necessity of verifying requests. If an order is received by email, please alert your staff to hover over the address to see if it was sent from an address that contains an ending of “@kent.edu”.

In addition, please confirm the address for any suspicious or large dollar orders, with the ordering department. All orders for ����Թ� should be delivered only to official ����Թ� addresses.

Should you receive what appears to be a suspicious order, please forward the email to phish@kent.edu. Additionally, if you would like Procurement to verify an email's legitimacy before responding to the email or fulfilling the order, you may contact our department at procurement@kent.edu.