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Blog / Dental Office Invoice Scams: How to Stop Payment Fraud
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Dental Office Invoice Scams: How to Stop Payment Fraud

Ekim IT Solutions guide to stopping invoice scams and payment fraud at dental offices

The most convincing invoice scam may look exactly like a normal vendor payment request.

Dental practices routinely pay labs, equipment suppliers, software vendors, and service providers. Attackers exploit those relationships by impersonating familiar contacts or inserting fraudulent banking instructions into legitimate conversations.

Strong email security helps, but preventing payment fraud also requires independent verification, clear approval responsibilities, and a process that stops suspicious changes before money moves.

Never Trust a Banking Change by Email Alone Even a genuine vendor email thread is not enough to authorize new payment instructions.

An attacker may control a vendor mailbox or imitate a legitimate sender while using real invoice details. Pause any payment destination change, call the vendor using a trusted number already on file, and document the confirmation before updating banking information or approving payment.

Independent Vendor Verification

Three steps before accepting new payment instructions.

A callback rule removes the guesswork when a dental lab, equipment supplier, or other vendor requests a banking change.

01

Pause the payment

Do not change the saved bank account or release funds because an email says the vendor has new instructions.

02

Call a trusted number

Use a phone number established before the suspicious email arrived, such as one in verified vendor records.

03

Record the verification

Document the person reached, the confirmation, the date, and the approval before changing the payment destination.

Do not call the number provided in the suspicious email, reply to that same thread for confirmation, or bypass verification because the message sounds urgent.

Separation of Duties

One person should not initiate, verify, and approve every high-risk payment.

An approval chain makes it harder for a fraudulent email to turn into an unauthorized transfer.

GATE 01 / REQUEST

Invoice review

A designated employee reviews the vendor, invoice details, amount, and any newly requested banking information.

GATE 02 / VERIFY

Independent callback

A responsible staff member confirms any banking change using previously verified contact information and preserves the evidence.

GATE 03 / APPROVE

Second authorization

A separate authorized person reviews the verification and approves the transaction when required by policy.

✓
Only release the payment after the required checks are complete.

Define which transactions need dual approval, who has authority, and how exceptions are handled. Urgency should not override the process.

Fraud Response Priorities

When money is sent to the wrong account, every minute matters.

Take the financial recovery steps immediately while preserving evidence and investigating possible email compromise.

01

Contact the bank immediately

Report the fraudulent payment and ask for a recall, reversal, or other available recovery measures. Provide the transfer details.

02

Report the fraud

Submit a complaint to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov and coordinate with appropriate law enforcement.

03

Preserve the evidence

Retain original emails, full headers, invoices, suspicious banking instructions, payment confirmations, and related communications.

04

Investigate the accounts

Have IT check for suspicious sign-ins, mailbox rules, external forwarding, compromised sessions, and unauthorized application access.

Do not delay the call to your financial institution while gathering evidence. Recovery is not guaranteed, but immediate reporting may improve the opportunity to stop or recover funds.

Worried a vendor invoice could route payment to the wrong account? We tighten email security and payment verification to cut your exposure.
Review Payment Verification →

Can you spot the invoice diversion?

Compare the trusted vendor record with the received email. Tap the email fields to check which details changed.

Interactive invoice fraud detective

Fictional training example. There are two changed details. Even a genuine-looking invoice needs independent payment verification.

Trusted vendor record Saved before this email arrived
Vendor Example Dental Lab
Invoice reference LAB-2048
Known sender billing@samplelab.example
Bank account on file Ending in 0426
Received payment email Tap each field to investigate
0 / 2 found 1 / 2 found 2 / 2 found 2 / 2 revealed

Check the sender domain and banking details carefully. An invoice reference can be real even when payment instructions have changed.

Good catch. There’s another discrepancy to find. Do not approve a bank-detail change from email alone.

Both changes identified: the sender domain differs and the bank account has changed. Hold payment and call the vendor using a trusted number already on file.

The two changes are the lookalike sender domain and the new bank account. Verify independently before any payment or banking update.

Training example only. Real payment changes must be confirmed using independently established contact details and the practice’s payment-approval policy. No messages are sent or data collected.

Frequently Asked Questions

Business email compromise, or BEC, is a fraud in which an attacker impersonates or compromises a trusted business email identity to manipulate someone into taking a financial or sensitive business action. Common examples include fraudulent wire instructions, changed vendor bank details, gift-card requests, payroll changes, fake invoices, and messages that appear to come from an executive, employee, vendor, or other trusted contact.
Pause the payment and verify any change in banking or payment instructions through a separate trusted channel before sending money. Staff should use a phone number or contact record that was already known or obtained independently, not a number or link supplied in the change request itself. Unexpected urgency, secrecy, or pressure to bypass normal approval procedures should be treated as additional warning signs.
DMARC can reduce scams that rely on spoofing a legitimate email domain, but it cannot stop every invoice scam. A fraudulent message may come from a genuinely compromised mailbox, a lookalike domain, or another trusted account that passes normal email authentication. Dental practices should combine SPF, DKIM, and DMARC with MFA, payment-verification procedures, user awareness, and monitoring for suspicious mailbox activity.
Contact the financial institution immediately and ask it to begin its fraud response and contact the institution that received the money. Preserve the fraudulent messages, headers, payment instructions, transaction records, and relevant logs; report the fraud to appropriate authorities such as the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center; and investigate the email environment for compromised accounts, suspicious sign-ins, forwarding rules, mailbox changes, or other attacker persistence. If patient information may also have been exposed, the practice should separately evaluate its privacy and breach-response obligations.
Paying vendors and labs by email without a way to catch a changed bank detail?

Ekim IT Solutions works exclusively with dental practices, supporting offices across all 50 states remotely. We harden your email, add payment verification safeguards, and monitor for compromised mailboxes so a spoofed invoice never reaches your bank.

Email security that stops payment fraud before it costs you.
Get a payment fraud protection review →

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