Weddings and events run on a long chain of small suppliers all paying each other by bank transfer: the venue, the florist, the caterer, the photographer, the band. Deposits move constantly, deadlines are real, and everyone is busy. That combination - trust, urgency and manual payments - is exactly what this scam is built to exploit.

Here is how it works. A fraudster gets into the email of one supplier in the chain, often a small firm with a simple password and no code on the phone. They watch quietly, learn the wording and the timing, then send an email that looks entirely normal: an invoice or a polite note that the bank details have changed, please use the new account from now on. The message comes from the real address, in the real conversation. Nothing looks wrong.

The money then lands in the fraudster's account, and it is often gone before anyone notices, because the two businesses each assumed the other had it right. The supplier is out the payment or the goods, the couple or client is chasing a deposit that vanished, and the relationship between two honest small firms takes the damage. The changed detail was the whole trick, and it hid in plain sight.

The defence costs nothing and works every time. Before you pay a new or changed bank detail, ring the supplier on a number you already had - not one from the email - and confirm the account out loud. Both parties should agree from the outset that bank details are only ever confirmed by phone, never trusted from an email alone. It feels slightly awkward the first time. It is far less awkward than the alternative.