Recruitment agencies have been warned to look out for a fraud that recently cost one recruiter £50,000.

Marilyn Davidson (pictured), a director of the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo), told Recruiter that she knew of at least two cases this year, one in the last month.

One of the cases involved individuals claiming to be from food processing and packaging company Tetra Pak, Davidson says.

After the vacancy was phoned in, a seemingly ideal candidate responded, and with everything apparently above board, the candidate started work in Thailand.

However, unbeknown to the agency, the people purporting to be from Tetra Pak and the candidate were in fact working together, says Davidson.

It was only after a few weeks that the agency realised that the people supposedly from Tetra Pak, had never worked actually worked for that company, or even existed.

Unfortunately, Davidson says that the time the penny had dropped, the agency had paid the contractor.

Davidson said that fraudsters are able to perpetuate this type of fraud because even when agencies are carrying out checks on the company involved they are checking the legitimate companies they believe they are doing business with. “This is very high value work, £1,000 a day, and therefore there is a significant loss of money,” Davidson adds.

“You really need to double check that the person you are dealing with really is who they say they are,” she warns,

However, Davidson says the global nature of contracting often makes it difficult. “They are not going to met people - that’s the problem. It’s too easy to do this remotely.”