Notice to Suppliers and Potential Suppliers of Fraudulent Email Activity Involving Orders

This notice is to alert you to an active email scam involving purchase orders and request for product quotations that purport to originate from the University of Connecticut, but are, in fact, fraudulent. While the university cannot prevent this illegal activity, it has informed law enforcement.

Please be cautious and alert to potentially false emails and order documentation, and carefully review unsolicited POs purporting to be from the university, especially if UConn is not already a customer of yours.  Here are some common traits or themes of these fraudulent emails that may help reduce risk to your company of becoming a victim of this financial scam:

-The email message is poorly written, with misspellings and awkward sentence structure.

-The senders’ email address or website link are not authentic to UConn.

-The message requests shipment of product to non-UConn addresses.

-The message may include an attachment that is designed to look like a UConn purchase order, may include a logo or other graphic, and a signature that seems legitimate, but may have  misspellings or others errors that indicate it is not legitimate.

If you have any questions as to the authenticity of a purchase order or request for quotation that purports to be from UConn, please contact us directly.  If you believe that you have received a fraudulent email that claims to be from UConn, you should forward it, via email to John Clifford (john.clifford@uconn.edu), Procurement Services, to verify its legitimacy before responding to the email or filling the order.

We understand this may be part of a massive nationwide scam, targeting educational institutions in particular.  The University accepts no liability for goods shipped based on fraudulent emails, purchase orders, or other documentation purporting to be from UConn, and will not pay invoices, damages or expenses of any supplier deceived by the fraud.

Procurement Services and the University of Connecticut value our partnership with our suppliers and appreciate the very important role they play in providing goods and services to our faculty, students, and staff in support of their academic and research endeavors.  Please be assured that we are reporting all fraudulent emails of which we become aware to the appropriate personnel.