The Small Firms Association has issued a warning that Irish businesses are still the target of advanced fee fraud and other letter and e-mail scams. The Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation confirmed an increase in the receipt of such letters.

According to the SFA, many of the scams originate in Nigeria and offer to lodge millions of embezzled pounds to an account in the name of the addressee, with the promise of the person receiving a sizeable share of the money for their co-operation.

Typically the authors of the letters claim to be civil servants who have salted away huge sums of money through over-invoicing. They are seeking "a reliable and trustworthy partner" to provide details of a company or personal account so that they can transfer the funds without delay.

This is an extract from one of the letters forwarded to the SFA by one of its members: "To effectively and officially get these funds transferred to you we need your private telefax and home telephone numbers, two copies of your company's letter-headed paper and proforma invoice stamped and signed by you along with your full banking particulars."

Det Supt Willie McGee of the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation said the bureau's advice was to take no notice of these unsolicited letters and either refer them to the bureau or throw them in the bin. He said that under no circumstances should anyone attempt to follow up the letters in any way, in an effort to find out more. Since some countries have clamped down on bulk mail of this kind through their postal systems, the fraudsters are now turning to e-mail. Not one of the companies had requested a listing but, according to the SFA, they are being billed and threatened with legal action for failure to pay.