Notice to Suppliers: Fraudulent Purchase Order Email Activity

An active e-mail scam involves purchase orders and requests for quotes that purport to originate from UC Davis, but are fraudulent.

These fraudulent e-mails may contain one or more of these traits or themes:

  • The request comes from the Chief Procurement Officer (CPO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or other person in university leadership. Commonly used names include Michael Kuhner, Michael Morgan, Tim Maguire and Noel Sousa. The UC Davis CPO does not create or place Purchase Orders.
  • The message seeks to enroll the company into a vendor/supplier list.
  • The message may include an attachment that is designed to look like a purchase order, includes a logo or other graphic, and a signature that may look legitimate.
  • The e-mail message may be poorly written, with misspellings and awkward sentence structure.
  • The sender's e-mail address does not end in ucdavis.edu or appears to end in ucdavis.edu, but when you hover over it, it directs to a different email address.  You should always hover over the email address to ensure it ends with .ucdavis.edu.
  • The message requests shipment of products to non-UC Davis addresses or claims that UC Davis will send a carrier to pick up the shipment.
  • The message may contain non-UC Davis phone or fax numbers.  When in doubt, perform an online search to confirm the status of a phone or fax number.

When in doubt about the legitimacy of a message, do not click on any of the links in the message, and do not take any action to fulfill the order.

Prior to responding to the e-mail or fulfilling the order, verify its legitimacy by contacting UC Davis Procurement & Contracting Services at procure-help@ucdavis.edu.

UC Davis values our partnership with our suppliers - and appreciates the very important role you play in providing goods and services to our faculty, students and staff in support of their academic, research, and patient care endeavors. If you believe you have received a fraudulent e-mail, you may forward it to cybersecurity@ucdavis.edu.