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Fraud and scam alert

BAT Group companies occasionally receive calls and emails from members of the public enquiring or seeking to confirm a job offer, prize award, offer of grant or other business-related offer.

Recruitment fraud

Recruitment fraud usually takes the form of a job offer from an organisation pretending to recruit on behalf of a BAT Group company, or from someone claiming to work for or be affiliated to a BAT Group company.  The organisation/person offers employment at BAT and then requests money for things like recruitment checks, work permits, insurance policies, travel costs, taxes, etc.

BAT Group companies and organisations that recruit on BAT’s behalf will never ask for payment at any point in the recruitment process. All communications will originate from a verifiable BAT email address and not from an internet email address.

Prize award and grant frauds

With this type of fraud, text messages or e-mails purporting to be sent on behalf of a BAT Group company may inform the recipient that they have won a BAT lottery or draw, or that they are eligible for a BAT grant. The emails or texts will usually ask the recipient to send money in order to receive the winnings or grant.

Please note that BAT Group companies do not organise lottery or draw promotions for the public and nor do BAT Group companies award grants via unsolicited email or text messages.

Other business-related fraud

Other scam emails and calls are performed by people who introduce themselves as employees or representatives of BAT Group companies and say they are interested in buying, selling or renting property, products or services.  Or, they may seek help in transferring large amounts of foreign currency for a variety of reasons such as helping BAT avoid aggressive corporate takeover bids from its competitors.

BAT Group companies do not send unsolicited emails or make calls to individuals of this nature.  They would never seek personal information such as credit card numbers, account or invoice numbers, addresses and passwords.

What to do

•  Do not respond to unsolicited emails, calls or texts of the type described above.
•  Do not disclose your personal or financial details, make any payment to anyone you do not know/trust or make any payment on a website you do not know/trust.  If you think you have been misled into doing this, consider reporting the incident to your local law enforcement.

BAT Group companies cannot accept any responsibility for money lost in such circumstances.