In a similar case to the fake TSB emails last month brokers are presented with a fake mortgage offer before being invited to input their account details into a fake version of the Outlook email service.
Fraudsters posing as Halifax are emailing brokers with a view to stealing their account details.
In a similar case to the fake TSB emails last month brokers are presented with a counterfeit mortgage offer before being invited to input their password into a fake version of the Outlook email service (pictured below).
Jonathan Burridge, a mortgage broker based in East London, said: “It landed in my inbox and wasn’t flagged as spam.
“It looked good, was the right format and was well presented, but I didn’t have a client with the loan amount referred to or I could well have clicked on it.”
Halifax urged brokers to keep their wits about them, while it pledged to respond to intermediaries who have questions about the issue.
A spokesman for Halifax Intermediaries said: "Protecting our intermediary customers and their clients from online fraud is a priority for us, and we would urge them to remain vigilant to all external emails, especially those that ask them to open a link or attachment."
With such emails the sender can be a giveaway, which in this case was [email protected] and [email protected]
Burridge added: “Generally with these phishing things it’s easy to work out what they are. The only danger is somebody clicking on a link without thinking about it.
“A policeman once said to me it’s easy to catch criminals because by nature they are not very intelligent.
“The mortgage fraud that gets attempted through us is so terrible you would have to be quite incompetent to not know what’s going on, so it backs up the policeman’s flippant remark.
“However if you were sitting in an office in a high volume environment you could click on it without thinking about it.”
The bank pledged to respond to brokers who have questions about the issue.
