A distinct and unpleasant situation: your company name, logo, and sometimes staff names are being used by an operation you have nothing to do with. The first indication is usually an angry call from someone who has lost money and believes you took it.

Respond to the caller properly

These are victims, and how you treat them shapes whether this becomes a reputational event. Confirm calmly that this was not your company, explain what you know, and help them with the practical next steps: contact their bank immediately, preserve evidence, and report to the relevant agency. Take their details and what they can tell you about the operation — with their permission — because that information is genuinely useful.

Publish a warning page

A clear page on your own site describing the impersonation, what the fraudulent operation does, which domains and numbers are involved, and how to reach you genuinely. It ranks for searches of your name alongside terms like scam, it gives you something to link people to immediately, and it demonstrates that you responded.

Pursue the infrastructure

  • Registrar and host abuse reports for any lookalike domain or cloned site.
  • Platform reports for fake profiles, advertisements, and applications.
  • Safe-browsing submissions so browsers warn visitors.
  • Telecom provider reports for numbers being used, where your jurisdiction supports it.

Tell the authorities and your sector

Report it to your national fraud body, and to your regulator if you are in a regulated sector — several require notification of impersonation. If a trade association or peer network exists, warn them, because these operations frequently work through a list of similar businesses in sequence.

Brief your own team

Everyone who answers a phone or an inbox needs to know what is happening, what to say, and where to route callers. Nothing compounds the damage faster than a confused or dismissive response to someone who has just lost money.

Document it all

Keep a record of every complaint, every report filed, and every action taken. You may need to demonstrate to regulators, insurers, or clients that you responded promptly and reasonably — and if the operation persists, that record is the basis of any escalation.