Episode 91 | How to Protect Your Assets from Fraud

Let’s speak about fraud and how you can protect yourself and your business! Be a good friend and pass this episode on to someone else who needs to hear this episode!

Today we’re so lucky to have Laura join us to have this very important chat! Take note and make sure you take care of your money, items, and personal information!! 

 Here are the types of fraud you should look out for! 

1. Physical theft - protect your physical assets such as blank checks 
2. Malware - also known as nuisance theft which could also result in ransoms 
3. Impersonation and phishing scams- the fraudsters are after your money and will fool you to think they are someone else

Laura talks about ways to prevent these types of theft from occurring in your business and in your personal life! 

Follow Laura for more great money-saving tips on Instagram at Financially Organized. 

XO,

Sophia

A Team Dklutr Production

Transcript

Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies 

Laura Hargrave: Welcome everyone here at Boss It. We would love to hear from you. Join us in our Boss It community by heading over to our website, bossitclub.com, and join our mailing list. As we grow, we will be launching our community of fellow Boss It BFFs, and we want you to be a part of it.

Okay, Sophia Noreen, let's dig into this. I can't wait to tell them all about how we got here.

Sophia: Welcome to the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen and I took an Etsy startup and launched it in big-box retailers within 12 months. As a creative with an entrepreneurial drive, I left my full-time career in healthcare to find better harmony between career, family, and self-care. We believe you can have it all. Yes, you can launch and run a successful scalable business while maintaining harmony in all aspects of your life. We believe we can learn from each other and draw on many experiences to create the best life possible. During each episode, we will share proven life hacks that will keep you on top and striving every day.

There should be no hesitation. Make a plan. Take action. We are here for you!

Sophia:Hello, everyone. Welcome to another fantastic episode. Oh, the bus today. I am extremely excited because I have Laura joining us again for another episode. Hey, Laura, how's it going?

Laura: Good.
 
Sophia: So we're going to talk about a really juicy topic and I'll let Laura do the intro for it.

Sophia: But I do think that everyone needs to take special notes during this episode because there is some hot tips that are going to be dropped that can prevent you from losing a lot of money.

Laura: Okay. So today I think. Little chat would be on how to protect your business assets. So lately I've been hearing a lot of stories about how people are encountering scams, phishing, and malware theft.

Laura: And so I think it'd just be great to kind of break breaking down. People like me, solar printers, I kind of worked in a little silo and I don't always hear what's going on in everyone else's business. So it just kind of nice to be aware of these things and to hear what's going on so that you were sort of radar is up when it comes to these problems.

Sophia: Even for us in healthcare all the way to the product case business, we are, have to be aware of these scams because they are cyber criminals that are out there that are looking. And the way it's been described to me anyway, is that it's literally their business. To go and fraud. You have your money. They have a board room set up chatting about who to go for, who is at risk, and who is vulnerable.

Sophia: And apparently I've read that it could be up to 18 months beforehand that they're targeting you. So let's figure out what the signs are and safeguard ourselves. So we're not a victim to the cyber-criminal. 

Laura: Yeah, so true to note like these criminals are so much more sophisticated than they used to be. It's not the pick up the phone and says like, is your refrigerator running just the really cheesy, bad criminals? It's not that anymore. They're doing it in a very sophisticated way. So I think that it's really good to be vigilant on what's going on in your business and how we can maybe keep an eye out for some of these things.

Laura: So first let's talk. Physical facts. Now this is not narrow. This has been a thing that businesses have encountered forever. Right? So it's a common issue in business establishments. And so I just wanted to give an example of a physical fast that someone might not have thought of or that kind of thing that's happened to a client of mine about a year ago or so.

Laura: And it was actually what had happened. They were required to mail a supplier. Some post-dated checks it was to do with rent and they were mailing the post-dated checks. Well, what happened is. Someone decided to pick their mail up for them and deposit all of those checks. So luckily like the client noticed quite quickly and realized like, Hey, wait a minute, these are post-dated checks.

Laura: Why did they all just go through at once? So it kind of alerted them as to what was going on. And then from there, obviously the landlord and the bank, everyone was notified and that did work out in the end. Okay. I guess it's just a good reminder is to protect your assets. Protect your physical items, don't leave checks.

Laura: So if you have a stack of checks going to somewhere, consider the safety and how they're getting there. So popping them in a mailbox at the end of a busy downtown core might not be the best. You may want to hand-deliver that or ask for an alternative address? That's a little safer and yet don't leave your checks laying around so anybody can steal blank checks.

Laura: They can easily be cashed through the ATM. So it's not even necessarily a teller. That's being. And it's just the hassle, right? It's just extra time out of your business in your day and stress that you don't need. So if you don't have a safe, grab a safe, put them in there, hide them, don't leave them out. Same with money, right. Basically, it is a form of money and you wouldn't just leave money hanging around. So the same thing goes for. Yeah, well said. 

Sophia: And you would think that a post dated check wouldn't have cashed, but clearly there have been provisions made at the bank level, I suppose, that are clearing checks if they're deposited automatically, because I noticed if I put a check it's auto deposited into my account immediately, it's kind of scary.

Sophia: Right? Don't really look at my texts as an asset, but. 

Laura: Yeah, they're susceptible to theft just as we saw in that example. So definitely keep those hidden somewhere and under locking key if he can. Yeah. That's pretty scary there. The next one that we deal with, this is kind of like the nuisance theft and that smell.

Laura: And I've heard of a ton of organizations from like school boards, even down to like small businesses like me experiencing just these nuisance malware scans. And so what has happened to me over the past few months is I keep getting hacked. My website keeps getting. And it's interesting because there's nothing there really gaining from hacking it, other than it just being a super large nuisance for me.

Laura: And what comes out of those types of things is you're then paying somebody to clean your website up. You might be down for some period of time. May have to start back from the beginning. I've heard of situations where there's ransom involved. I mean, there are a lot of just kind of lurking situations, right?

Laura: Just something to keep your head up for and to think about when you're giving out your information. Yeah. 

Sophia: So it was malware. Is there anything people can do to prevent that 

Laura: from happening? Yeah. So something I've learned is to keep your website up to date. So make sure you're regularly going in on the backend, make sure you're doing the updates that are available.

Laura: Make sure anything that you're not using like plugins or themes or those kinds of things. Make sure you get rid of those because that's where it's coming in from is generally those types of things. The other thing is, and this is like across the board is passwords. We need to be changing our passwords a heck of a lot more than we are though.

Laura: Something that I have started to do. And I'm obsessed with Google calendar or any sort of calendar or reminder system that you're using is to put in your calendar a space to remind you to change the password. So every time. It's just so simple. And whether you're writing down your passwords by hand on a piece of paper at home or whatever it is, I know we say it a lot, but it is really worth the exercise to just go and change your password.

Laura: I know it's annoying and I know it's hard to sometimes remember them, but if it saves you having your website shut down for two weeks or. Having to pay a developer, you know, multiple times to get the virus out or whatever it is, honestly, it's so worth it just to prevent it in the first place. Yeah. 

Sophia: And I liked that tip where we put a reminder on our phone or our calendar and it's like password change day or something.

Sophia: And you go through and you completely change all your passwords, which I think would be a brilliant idea to do with somebody on the phone and chit chat and change passwords. 

Laura: Yeah. Get it done and schedule it in. Believe me, what do they say? An ounce of prevention is. Some saying that really is worth it to do it now, then to end up going through it later, a lot of these malware things also come from clicking on things that you shouldn't.

Laura: So don't ever click on links. If you think something is suspicious, just leave it and pick up the phone, make a phone call. Hey, did you send me this email with this link? I know like even on Facebook or Instagram, now there's lots of impersonators out there and then you get somebody messaging you and other link and you're like, oh, Hey, my friend, Karen just messaged me this link, double check that it's really her, that it's not coming from an impersonation account.

Laura: That's how they're getting in. So just be really vigilant when you're clicking on things, never disclose any personal information. We all kind of know that. Common sentence, but still it's how these things are coming about. So just be careful with that. And then lastly, something that is kind of a big topic and something I've noticed from a few different clients now, and this is really where the real damage is being done is through impersonation and phishing scams.

Laura: So people are losing real money here, big dollars. This is something that is sophisticated at times and hard to almost. But that's why I think it's worth talking about today. Just so that you kind of have your spidey senses up when it comes to something that seems off, they're not always preventable because you don't always know.

Laura: Right. But keeping your eyes open for these sort of situations, I've actually had this happen to two different clients, not mine, but people in common. So through these impersonation scams, what happens is the impersonator, the intrusive. The fraudster is basically finding a way into your email. And because as businesses, we have a lot of information going through our email, right?

Laura: We're sending out invoices or receiving invoices. We're talking about payments. When who, where, and that's a lot of sensitive data, right? What happened was someone logged into their email? And like you said before, this could have been monitored for some period of time. They could have been watching it.

Laura: And based on what had happened, I think that it was being. The supplier, he was in construction, had a client who was going to make a series of payments to him through e-transfer I guess that had been somewhat agreed upon by email. And so there was a trace there that this invoice was outstanding. It was going to be made and it was going to be done through training.

Laura: What happened was the impersonator started sending emails to this client using that correct email address to say to the client like, oh my account, something funky is going on. Can you actually make payment to this email address and stat? Oh no. And it was coming from a legitimate source. So they didn't know, the client had no idea that the payment wasn't supposed to come to them and they ended up making payment to this.

Laura: And it wasn't caught until a phone call was made and something happened. And it was like, oh, when's my money coming? And it was like, oh, I already sent a payment. And it was like, no, we didn't receive. And then finally just going through, they were able to figure out that somebody had entered into the email, contacted the customer and requested a change of where the payment was going.

Laura: It's scary because that's so sophisticated. Like it's so difficult to watch out for those things, but something we kind of did notice afterwards was some email programs allow you to look at the activity within your. And this specific email, they were able to tell that there had been some log-ins coming from Nigeria into the email.

Laura: And so obviously that was a big issue, right? So this fraudster had continually been in their email going through to see what was going on. So I definitely, if you're able to, I'd be monitoring that just to kind of make sure that you're the only login another great way to prevent this is double authentication.

Laura: Yes. Right. So I think you're familiar with that too. You use it in a lot of different areas of your business. Yes. So if 

Sophia: you don't know about double authentication, I use an authenticator app. I know a lot of websites now will allow you to do text messaging as well as an authenticator app. I'd pick the app just in case I'm not in the country and I'm not getting text messages.

Laura: It's just giving you two ways to log in. So like when you log into a program, like for instance, I know QuickBooks uses this, I log in, it says, we're going to send the code to your special email or text or whatever you get the verification code and you enter. Yep. It's a pain in the butt. Yeah. It gets a little extra time into your day, but for certain areas of your business, Super super, a great way to prevent sort of some of these intruders into our digital world.

Laura: Another great way to sort of keep your eyes open for these types of scams and sort of preventing them is making sure you're into your accounting books daily. So obviously keeping a handle on your finances and maintaining that organization is going to give you that heads up. If something is not right and it's going to do it quickly and therefore you can then work to rectify it.

Laura: So banks notoriously take a long time to sort this out. It usually has to go through the fraud department within the banks. Then it goes to maybe local police or whatnot. It's a process and it takes a while and you can lose access to your banks. Your bank accounts could be frozen or whatnot. Right. And I think it's really important and worth it to make sure you're on that in the shorter disruption the better.

Laura: Right. So keeping those reconciliations going and knowing if you see something funky, like three of the same checks, all deposited what's going on. Oh, somebody deposited my post-dated checks. Right? Like, so that's sort of a good thing to do. And do you 

Sophia: recommend going into your account every few days or every week, but what cadence is the safest.

Laura: Ideally every couple of days, but definitely every week minimum, I think so. And along the lines on that email impersonation, like they're also doing it in reverse too. So I've heard not only are they contacting customers to say send money elsewhere, but they're also impersonating being your supplier as well.

Laura: I've heard of this case where they contacted the business owners saying, oh, our system. We're off. Can you, instead of wiring the money to this person, can you wire it to that person?

Laura: And again, just another thing to be aware of what's going on out there and a great way in your sort of processes, which I think is sort of the start of it, right? You need to have a financial process of how you're sending money. And so something to double check is if there is ever a change made, so to where you're supposed to pay it, how you're supposed to pay it, I would be double-checking that for instance, is the name of the.

Laura: The exact same as the name of the payer. And it's not why you have an understanding of why that is. So if it's 2, 3, 5 Ontario, Inc you're should be paying 2, 3, 5 Ontario, Inc. And so those things need to match up. And if not, I would demand the reason why. And I do that by phone. Verbal confirmation is hang right.

Laura: So making sure you're able to ask the questions and understand. I know so often we're busy and in a rush and we just need to get our tests done when it comes to dispersing money. I think that's something that you really want to take the time to make sure. That the payment is going to the right person, each transfer I've heard of those being interrupted.

Laura: In fact, I've read some instances where each transfer are being pulled out of the system. So again, something else I always practice is if I know any transfers coming in from a certain client and I don't get it by the end of the day, when they said they were going. I will just follow up, like, Hey, just want to just check it in.

Laura: See, come through. And I usually frame it in, like, I know people get busy or sometimes the wrong address gets typed in, but it's always good to follow up because if you're expecting the money, you don't want to lose it. Right. So that's sort of the practice that I've always done. 

Sophia: That's a very good tip too.

Sophia: And I think sometimes, many of the people listening may be collecting funds and they don't want to seem pushy, but you can frame it in such a way, like you said, people get busy and just want to ensure that payment has been made or say it in such a way that you're verifying. Been paid or not paid because it only takes a second and EMT they're very much immediate depending on if there's a password set up.

Sophia: There's auto deposited in Canada. And I'm sure a different ways of paying like through pay pal and such that as soon as the money is moved out of the account, it's gone, right? So there are cyber criminal, and their intent is to move the money. They'll wrap the money as fast as possible, and they'll push.

Sophia: That's a real risk. I know banks here in Canada have said that they will pull money out of the bank account. If a police report is filed and is deemed as fraud. So, but the bank has to have the money. They are intending on taking the money and running likely they'll move the money out of that. Extremely scary.

Sophia: Actually, if you think about it, because traditionally look at that as being material theft, like we spoke about earlier, like check or an asset, but in this circumstance, it is completely virtual. It can happen through lots of text messages. Now I know of one scam where they asked one of our employees to go to shoppers drug Mart, posing as our director and ask them to buy $700 worth.

Sophia: And then since they're a virtual email them.   

Laura: Oh, so they actually thought it was the director. Wow. 

Sophia: They only stopped because the shopper's drug Mart team member, who's passionate about it said, are you sure this is your boss? Because we have a lot of scams running through right now asking for a gift cards.

Laura: Yeah, it's so easy to get caught up when you don't have that radar on. And I think that's sort of something that you can work into your sort of processes, especially when it comes to financial. So if there's something that you're always doing virtually, especially with an employee, just have a second backend for confirmation, like maybe it's a secret code word, or maybe it's a quick phone call.

Laura: Did you send me this email? Yep. Okay, good. I'm going to buy the gift cards kind of thing, you know? So maybe that's part of how you create your policies and procedures surrounding money and how it's handled. I mean, some of us were solopreneurs. We don't have to worry about that situation, but there are lots of other things out there that can get you.

Sophia: Many of those situations where even as a solo preneur, you would go and pay an invoice. And perhaps the invoice looks like it's coming from the supplier, whoever you're intending to pay, but they're emailing from an impersonation account and telling you to change payment processes. So I think as a solopreneur, You have to have your guard up virtually...

Laura: As you were saying before each transfers, like it's so easy to get an email, like one letter incorrect, right?

Laura: When you're sending an e-transfer it's so easy to miss that letter. I know like it's happened a ton of times. If you're a solar preneur, if you're a smaller business, if you have a lot of transactions coming in by e-transfer, I'd maybe consider how you do your business. Just to safeguard you, maybe it's more so creating like a Shopify portal or some sort of portal where the client physically goes to your site to make the payment versus this kind of e-transfer that goes out into, and then gets you eventually.

Laura: I mean, sometimes it makes sense. So it definitely makes sense for some vendors. I. Certain transfers in sums, not so often or again like auto-deposit, although I've heard the, her still some security breaches there. So just be super vigilant. Stay on top of it. If you have to ask a question, ask there's ways to frame it, like you said, to make it not sound threatening or pushy, it's just like, Hey, just want to follow up.

Laura: Cause I don't want to miss something. Did you send this? Did you get to it? I know we're busy sort of thing. 

Sophia: And I liked how you suggested doing it in a timely manner. If it is a fraudulent ask and the person expecting funds doesn't reach out fast enough, then there's nothing that can be done to retract the payment.

Sophia: If it's happens within like a 24 hour period, you're hoping that the bank will cooperate and they'll stop payment or they'll intervene and pull him back. Especially if you have team members or you yourself have the ability. I would follow up with payment requests within the 24 hour period. If they said, they're gonna say.

Sophia: Absolutely. Yeah, it does seem pushy, but I think if you explain, well, we just want to ensure the safeguard of your funds is being famous. 

Laura: And that's sort of something that I was reading another paper and they said a lot of these fraudsters come across in sort of a urgent and pushing me and aggressive manner.

Laura: That's another thing just to watch out for something seems off that way. Start to question. It starts to think about it. How, why, you know, what is going on. Um, just when you're thinking about communication with you as a business and sort of what's coming your way, just another thing to keep your spidey senses going on.

Laura: If someone starts to become a little aggressive, I love that tip because 

Sophia: it is very much a red flag. And I think even when it comes to doing business outside of the virtual world, if somebody is pushing you to make payments and is being very aggressive writing off. Or in thing less that the funds going, that's a red flag.

Sophia: I had a friend recently who's paid her vendors for construction renovations, and the guy has disappeared. He sees more than 50% deposit and they can't find them. So again, you said he was just so eager to get paid and they were so eager to get it done. It's that desperation, right? Like I feel more desperate.

Sophia: The easier it is for them to take advantage of you and vice versa. The more desperate they appear that she'd been red flag and be like, well, let's pause for a second. What's going on here? 

Laura: Yeah. And that's a whole other industry that's like known for a lot of red flags there, I would say never, ever pay upfront instruction.

Laura: So if you can avoid it.

Sophia: I think there's some people that prefer a small deposit, but it's technically, it's very small. If they do ask for it, I've never had anybody ask more. Some of them. 

Laura: It's so important to just be aware of what's going on in there. There's a lot of new things and we don't always hear from other businesses, some are ashamed or embarrassed.

Laura: Don't want to talk about it, but just knowing what's going on and how it's changing in the landscape of the sort of this topic is a good refresher to remember. Yes. 

Sophia: And set up those internal controls and checks and balances. If you have a spidey sense within trust, your gut instinct or intuition, and don't get pushed around, remember they are criminal, so they'll do whatever it takes to get that money.

Sophia: That's not, well, it was fantastic having you on again. Laura, give us her pitch. Where can we find you?

Laura: we just launched financially organized.ca and you can find me on instagram@financiallyorganized.ca as well as my website there. And yeah, we're also on Facebook too. So I'm rolling out a few tips and tricks as we go.

Laura: We're just launching. So I'm really excited to start helping businesses become organized in all their financial things. Yay. Okay, great guys. 

Sophia: And remember, make a plan and take action and yes, you can have it all. And we'll talk to you guys again next week. Take care. Bye bye. 

Sophia Noreen: So my fellow Bosses, did you enjoy that episode? Now, it's time for you to make a solid plan and take action. But first, remember to subscribe and follow the Boss It Podcast so you receive a notification whenever we drop an episode. Remember to leave us a review on iTunes. Take a screenshot of your review and share it on Instagram as a post or a story, and tag us at Boss It Club. If Instagram is not your thing, no worries. Email your screenshot to podcast@bossitclub.com. As a massive thank you, we will be sending you our top 50 tips for starting and scaling a business. This list is exclusively for podcast reviewers so don't miss out. Now, remember Bosses, make a plan and take action in all aspects of your life. Yes, you can have it all.