Gardai have warned that fraudsters are becoming increasingly more sophisticated after one couple lost €600,000 through a scam.
Detective Chief Superintendent Pat Lordan warned that email compromise is on the rise.
Explaining how the scam works, Detective Lordan said: "Businesses owe an amount of money on an invoice. The invoice comes in, and there's attached a bank IBAN number to pay it.
READ MORE: Irish people warned of 'sinister' free Cadbury Easter basket scam circulating on WhatsApp
"In fact, the IBAN has been changed in the course of the transmission of the email and that IBAN is now for an organised crime gang's bank account… and we are seeing a lot of people falling for this."
Email compromise scams are being targeted at businesses and at those who are purchasing property.
Detective Lordan told RTE's Morning Ireland: "The real issue here is that the invoice is due, but the fact is you're sending it to the incorrect IBAN number and what happened in the case I'm referring to is in relation to a number of house purchases.
"Over the last couple of years, we have seen the purchasers getting an email from their solicitor to say the deal is now done, go and pay your money into this bank account and one couple lost over €600,000.
"Thankfully, they realised their mistake very, very quickly when they had spoken to their solicitor and gardai here in the Financial Intelligence Unit recovered over 85 per cent of the money in a European country."
Detective Lordan also warned of accommodation fraud and asked that people only use legitimate sites when looking for accommodation, not social media.
He said: "Accommodation fraud was gone a little bit quiet, I suppose due to Covid, but now everybody wants to go on holidays, whether it's down to west cork or north Donegal or further afield, and we are seeing a lot of the criminal gangs focusing on rental fraud, long term and short term.
"So my advice is to keep away from these social media sites. Go onto a traditional site that you've used before and book it that way because the deal that you see on one of the social media sites when you get to your premises, I'm afraid, as one family found out recently, there was another family living in the house when they arrived there, and they had paid a substantial amount of money to rent it long term."
Detective Lordan explained that the money taken is not returned in most scam cases as the bank is not liable.
He said: "Most of the criminals are very intelligent. They are using different methodologies to get the money from you, ranging from iTunes vouchers to cash to PayPal and a lot of other offline payment methods but absolutely, in most of these cases, the bank are not liable because you have given away your PIN number, you've given away your passcode, and in some cases, you've given control of your bank account."
READ MORE: Ireland scams: Gardai join forces with Interpol to take down scam gang who have stolen €18million
READ MORE: Irish citizens could be banned from entering Russia as Putin set to retaliate to sanctions
Get breaking news to your inbox by signing up to our newsletter.
