OFFICE OF GOVERNMENT COMMERCE

At 12.44pm on 3rd August 2006 the OGC Service Desk received a call from a private sector company advising that they had received a fax from Dan Jacobs, Senior Procurement Officer at the Office of Government Commerce. The contents of the fax advised the ‘prospective contractor’ that to be eligible for procurement with the Office of Government, they must submit an ‘authorization to release financial information’ form. The form requested bank account details, sort codes and other financial information.

Subsequent to this a further 15 calls were received within five hours all from companies over the United Kingdom. On investigation this was a known scam that was circulating, both in the UK and the United States. To date we have received 145 enquiries.

Please be assured that OGC will never request information of this type in this way.

The police have been informed along with the Trading Standards Institute. This advice has also been published on the OGC website.

The advice from the police to private sector companies who may have fallen victim to this communication is that, it is the responsibility of each individual company to contact their local Constabulary to report the crime, and it should be investigated by those individual forces If any suppliers have any concerns regarding any requests for information, supposedly from OGC please advise them to contact the OGC Service Desk on 0845 000 4999.

Yours faithfully

Head of the Government Procurement Service