{"id":283,"date":"2013-07-03T12:27:11","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T12:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pressat.co.uk\/blog\/?p=283"},"modified":"2016-05-04T21:36:09","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T21:36:09","slug":"important-announcement-regarding-the-silence-media-network-invoice-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pressat.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/07\/important-announcement-regarding-the-silence-media-network-invoice-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"Important announcement regarding the Silence Media Network invoice scam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It has recently come to our attention that the PR industry as a whole is being\u00a0targeted\u00a0by an international crime ring calling itself\u00a0<strong>Silence Media Network<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The scam involves\u00a0generating\u00a0fake invoices under a genuine brand name and requesting further monies from PR agencies and businesses that have used our services.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>We would like to\u00a0clarify\u00a0that we do not mail out invoices nor do we request additional payments after a transaction has already been completed. All of our customer transactions are securely\u00a0carried out instead by PayPal using\u00a0military\u00a0grade encryption.<\/p>\n<p>If you have already paid for our services and happen to\u00a0receive\u00a0an invoice from a company claiming to be Pressat\/ Silence Media Network, an affiliate or somebody else you do not\u00a0recognise\u00a0please challenge the invoice or ignore it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.gdatasoftware.com\/blog\/article\/scam-letters-g-data-is-tracking-down-the-perpetrators.html\">G Data<\/a>, an antivirus security company in the UK have carried out an investigation on such phishing scams in an attempt to track down the criminals behind it.<\/p>\n<p>G Data explains the only time you should ever interact is: \u2018If you receive a court order [&#8230;] you have two weeks to tick the box with \u201cI object to this claim\u201d. You do not have to fill out anything else, sign [at the bottom] and return it to the court.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The scam seems to be extremely complex with companies registered in the Cyprus\u00a0jurisdiction\u00a0with links through the Netherlands using the Dutch bank ABN Amro.<\/p>\n<p>The information presented on these invoices is generic and being taken from published press releases.<\/p>\n<p>A number of other press release services in the industry including Cison Wire have been also\u00a0targeted\u00a0by this scam; you can see their blog post\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cision.com\/uk\/blog\/important-announcement-about-silence-media-network\/\">here\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>If you would like to discuss this further or are unsure of what action to take with regard to Silence Media Network or a similar situation please contact our support team.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It has recently come to our attention that the PR industry as a whole is being\u00a0targeted\u00a0by an international crime ring calling itself\u00a0Silence Media Network. The scam involves\u00a0generating\u00a0fake invoices under a genuine brand name and requesting further monies from PR agencies and businesses that have used our services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressat.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressat.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressat.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressat.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressat.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pressat.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":597,"href":"https:\/\/pressat.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions\/597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressat.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressat.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressat.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}