The UNL Procurement Services Department is alerting university departments and suppliers to a potential email ordering scam that involves requests for quotations, establishment of credit or submission of a purchase order, which purports to originate from the university but is in fact fraudulent.

While UNL cannot prevent this illegal activity, it will actively work with law enforcement to investigate fraudulent email contacts and to address fraudulent purchase orders issued in the university’s name should it become aware of them.

Some common traits or themes of these fraudulent emails, which may help reduce the risk to your department or company from becoming a financial victim of this scam, are:

• The email message is poorly written, with misspellings and awkward sentence structure;

• The sender’s email address or website link are not the same as the university’s standard email address domain which is @unl.edu;

• The delivery zip code listed in the email is something other than the university’s regular zip codes of 68588 or 68583;

• The message or counterfeit purchase order requests shipment/delivery of products to a non-University of Nebraska address. Take a moment to check the address on Google maps or similar site. UNL does not request delivery to apartments, business complexes or residential addresses; and

• The quote requests large quantities of highly resalable items such as chemicals, electronics, hard drives, memory, toner cartridges, medical or scientific items, etc. The message may include an attachment that is designed to look like an official request for quote or purchase order. It may include an authentic logo or university watermark copied from our website or contain some other graphic designed to look legitimate. It may even include a signature that looks legitimate representing one of our management team or buyers.

If you are not familiar with the documents being provided and/or content of a University purchase order or suspect fraud in any way, please contact us immediately before responding to the email or filling the order. The bulletin issued by the Department of Justice can be viewed here.

Any questions should be directed to Procurement Services, 402-472-2126.