A limited liability company received an invoice from a supplier whose email had been hacked, causing it to pay the invoice into a third party's account. Is it released from the debt for having paid believing it was paying its supplier?

This type of fraud (known as "man in the middle") is becoming increasingly common and involves a third party hacking a company's computer system to divert payments from its customers. For example, it intercepts a legitimate invoice and replaces the bank account number with one in its name, so that the customer makes the payment believing they are paying the invoice to their supplier.

Therefore, the question that arises in these situations is whether the debtor is released from the debt or not. Well, as a general rule, for a debtor to be exempt, they must pay their creditor or someone authorized by them. Thus, if the payment is made to a different person, the debt still exists. However:

• One of the exceptions to this rule occurs when the debtor pays someone who appears to be the creditor.
• For this, it is not enough that they believed they were paying their creditor. It is necessary that they acted in good faith and with diligence and that, even so, there were still objective circumstances that made them think they were paying the legitimate creditor.

Thus, to determine whether the debtor is released from the payment or not, in these types of cases, what the courts analyze is whether they acted with diligence when making the payment to someone who was really not their supplier. In any case, the best thing is to prevent these situations:

• Inform the employees of your company who handle payments about the existence of these types of frauds, so that they always check that the payment account is the one usually used by the supplier.
• If there is a change of bank account, contact your supplier's usual interlocutor and confirm that the new account is correct (for greater security, request a certificate of ownership).

 

If your company has been a victim of fraud, contact us. Our professionals will help and advise you on how to act in these situations.