Asked to pay for course via bank transfer.

boingy

It's almost certainly fine. The reason he wants a bank transfer is that it saves him the PayPal/card fees. Simple as that.

General_Grant

Ergates said:

Eyeful said:

1. You say you know him & trust him. Speak to him directly & have him tell you  the name, sort code, and account number  he wants you to pay the money into.

2. If he does not want to give you this info to get your £700, then you will have a  reason to think something dodgy is going on.

3. If he does not know what you are talking about, you will know its a scam.  

He *did* give the OP his name, sort code and account number.... that's what prompted the question in the first place.

The suggestion was to "speak".  The OP said they had been "sent" the details.  Not quite the same thing.

Ergates

General_Grant said:

Ergates said:

Eyeful said:

1. You say you know him & trust him. Speak to him directly & have him tell you  the name, sort code, and account number  he wants you to pay the money into.

2. If he does not want to give you this info to get your £700, then you will have a  reason to think something dodgy is going on.

3. If he does not know what you are talking about, you will know its a scam.  

He *did* give the OP his name, sort code and account number.... that's what prompted the question in the first place.

The suggestion was to "speak".  The OP said they had been "sent" the details.  Not quite the same thing.

Still unnecessary.  This wasn't an email that arrived out of the blue demanding money.  OP was in contact with someone regarding a course.  OP was aware that they would have to pay for this course.  The person emailed the OP their bank details for payment.

The OP's question wasn't "Can I be sure these bank details are from the doctor in question", it was "should I be concerned or is there any way I can protect myself? "  i.e. Is paying by bank transfer safe.

The level of paranoia being displayed in some of these responses is absurdly over the top and not at all helpful or useful.

Eyeful

1. The OP stated they were sent details of the account.
You do not know if it was sent by email or some other means.

2. He was expecting to get an email from Dr. X and gets an email from Dr. X, it does not mean the real Dr X sent it.
It could be from a scammer, 

3. This is why it is important to check who the emails come from.
The best way is to phone up the real Dr X and ask them to confirm these bank details.
Remember this is £700 not £5.

4. This is not paranoia as you think. This is the way frauds today are committed.
Scammers count on people not knowing about their methods or are to lazy to do basic checks.

5. Some time ago I received an email from myself.
If I had just opened it without doing some checks, my computer would have had flooded malware.

6. Email is the electronic equivalent of an old post card.
 Your email can be read and tampered with like an olf fashion post card.

7. If you were scammed out of £700, because you were too lazy to make a simple phone call, would you still feel it was paranoia?

Ergates

Eyeful said:

2. He was expecting to get an email from Dr. X and gets an email from Dr. X, it does not mean the real Dr X sent it.
It could be from a scammer, 

Could it?   Could it *really*?   A scammer who somehow knows that the OP is expecting to get an email from Dr X.  And who somehow knows what that email is about.   And how knows how much money OP is expecting to pay Dr X.  And who somehow knows OPs email address.  And somehow knows Dr X's name.  And has somehow set up a bank account with Dr X's name on it.  

Does that *really* sound like something that could happen in real life?

Eyeful said:

4. This is not paranoia as you think. This is the way frauds today are committed.
Scammers count on people not knowing about their methods or are to lazy to do basic checks.

No.  It isn't.  I challenge you to find *one single instance* of fraud that has been committed under the circumstances described by the OP.

sheramber

Ergates said:

Eyeful said:

2. He was expecting to get an email from Dr. X and gets an email from Dr. X, it does not mean the real Dr X sent it.
It could be from a scammer, 

Could it?   Could it *really*?   A scammer who somehow knows that the OP is expecting to get an email from Dr X.  And who somehow knows what that email is about.   And how knows how much money OP is expecting to pay Dr X.  And who somehow knows OPs email address.  And somehow knows Dr X's name.  And has somehow set up a bank account with Dr X's name on it.  

Does that *really* sound like something that could happen in real life?

Eyeful said:

4. This is not paranoia as you think. This is the way frauds today are committed.
Scammers count on people not knowing about their methods or are to lazy to do basic checks.

No.  It isn't.  I challenge you to find *one single instance* of fraud that has been committed under the circumstances described by the OP.

https://www.lawscot.org.uk/news-and-events/law-society-news/fraud-alert-email-interception/

Eyeful

Clearly you have never never hear, read, or watched a program on "Email Payment Fraud".
Also called "email interception fraud". its more common than you think.

https://guardiandigital.com/resources/blog/email-interception
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/possible-intercept-email-how-guardiandigital

Scammers count on a person like you, either not knowing about or believing such a thing can be done.
Suggest you educate yourself about it and do your own research into it from now on.

Ergates

All those cases are from *solicitors* and their clients.   Solicitors, who are well known to do sales of houses, who are thus specifically targets of scammers who work to intercept their emails.

Not doctors.  Not random members of teh public.

Eyeful

As I wrote in my last post do your own research from now on. You will will find scammers target more than just solicitors.

For ali we know this doctor may have advertised the course and the number of places available on the course. 
A scammer monitoring the doctors emails, intercepts it in the same way they do with a solicitor and the fraud continues in the same way.

I have nothing more to write to you on this subject,. 

Nasqueron

Ergates said:

Eyeful said:

2. He was expecting to get an email from Dr. X and gets an email from Dr. X, it does not mean the real Dr X sent it.
It could be from a scammer, 

Could it?   Could it *really*?   A scammer who somehow knows that the OP is expecting to get an email from Dr X.  And who somehow knows what that email is about.   And how knows how much money OP is expecting to pay Dr X.  And who somehow knows OPs email address.  And somehow knows Dr X's name.  And has somehow set up a bank account with Dr X's name on it.  

Does that *really* sound like something that could happen in real life?

Eyeful said:

4. This is not paranoia as you think. This is the way frauds today are committed.
Scammers count on people not knowing about their methods or are to lazy to do basic checks.

No.  It isn't.  I challenge you to find *one single instance* of fraud that has been committed under the circumstances described by the OP.

Just FYI we had this issue at work where a customer's emails were being intercepted, the scammers basically got our email, deleted it from client's inbox, edited a copy and then resent them to the customer pretended to be us. They were really dumb though as they used an obvious scam approach of trying to tell the customer to pay into "our" salesman's personal account temporarily which flagged it up as a scam and client got a new email for comms with us temporarily. I know of one other customer who believed they were paying us for a machine and we never received the money, assumed they were just not paying and put them on hold - assuming they were honest with us, they paid a scammer instead of us, probably in the same manner.