First they are trying through e-mail and now this

The Washington state Department of Transportation is warning government contractors and business owners about a new fraud operation.

Two government contractors recently received official-looking faxes from the U.S. Department of Transportation Procurement Office. The documents requested sensitive information, including bank account numbers.
The faxes are scams, according to the WSDOT.

In a fraudulent fax, the contractor is told there is a problem. The fax reads: "Your financial institution's privacy policy may not allow it to release your financial information, even to government institutions without your consent; therefore we must have such a form on file before we can move on with any procurement decisions."

On a second page, the contractor is asked to give its bank name, account numbers, and the signatures of two executives.

The fax scams are like a lot of e-mail scams where an e-mail that looks like it came from your bank warns of dire consequences if you don't act immediately
"Basically, this scam was so good that there was only a few minor details that were different," said Lloyd Brown, a WSDOT spokesperson.

The WSDOT has become so concerned about the scams that on Tuesday, it stopped allowing the public to download the artwork for WSDOT logos.

"The link is gone. But if people want to contact us and have a legitimate use for a logo, we're happy to provide it to them," Brown said.

"Contracting business is all about risk, and managing risk. Risk on a project on how much they will or will not have to spend on building a certain structure," Brown said. "We're going to be moving into an environment where scammers are going to be increasing that risk for a contractor. That's going to cost all of us more."

In one fax fraud case, a contractor almost lost $9,000. What saved the contractor was a bank employee who questioned why one of the banks involved in a wire transfer was from Russia.