Cybercriminals recently tried to scam the parents of students of Royal Grammar School

The cybercriminals recently tried to scam the parents of students of a private school by asking them to pay the fees of school in bitcoin to receive a discount in school fees. RGS (i.e. Royal Grammar School) in Jesmond of Newcastle was victim of this most recent phishing attack.

The phishing emails, full of grammatical and spelling errors, were sent from the Royal Grammar School bursar's official email account to the parents, which ask them to pay fees of school in bitcoin on that day itself to take the advantage of a 25% discount in school fees.

Thousands of pounds would have lost by the parents in one go, in case they become victim of this most recent phishing scam. Moreover, there is no way the parents can recover that lost money in scam. So, the parents were warned by the school administration to stay away and ignore these fraud emails that are related to payments.

An official statement of Royal Grammar School said that "we are aware that parents have received an email claiming you'll receive a 25% discount on fees for passing over details or claiming that you can now pay by bitcoin/cryptocurrency". The RGS official statement further said that "please note these are phishing emails and should not be opened or any links clicked. We are currently investigating this breach and information will be passed on to all parents in due course".

John Fern, the Royal Grammar School headmaster, wrote to all the parents that RGS never asks for bank details or money like this. Moreover, he also wrote that RGS is currently working with iSAMS, their email systems provider, for establishing what exactly has happened.

The affected families were also informed by John Fern that this phishing scam has been reported to police. Besides, the details have been passed on to Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) as emails of parents were accessed - although the school said that no financial information was stolen.

The ICO, who investigated this matter, told that the other schools might also be targeted. "[We are] aware of other phishing type attacks that have been targeted towards schools. Royal Grammar School has made us aware of an incident and we will assess the information provided," ICO told the media.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/4/2019