GIMA are warning gardening firms to beware of fraudsters after the latest scam involving one of their members, who received a bogus order for products...

A statement from Gima said: "We have just received information from a member company of an attempted scam/fraud which you may want to bring to the attention of your sales/customer service/accounts teams.

"The details they sent us are as follows...

"They received a call  from someone calling themselves Ryan Taylor from Stax Manchester depot wanting to place a large order and collect from them on Friday. 

"They followed this up with a purchase order which the member believed to be fraudulent because of a number of tell tale signs:

"Stax do not operate in this manner.

"Email address was a yahoo address not an official Stax address.

"Purchase order paperwork did not match a genuine purchase order.

"Call was made on a mobile.

"The depot had never heard of him.

"Please treat this seriously as there would appear to be an increasing number of incidents of this nature."