Small businesses are often targeted by scammers on the premise that since the business is small, owners are keen to find opportunities that will make them money. Thieves are also seeking easy targets for identity theft.
There are 10 common cons small business owners should watch out for.
1. Fake government grants. Government grants just aren’t handed out to specially-chosen businesses, so if you receive a notice that your business has been chosen for one, you should be leery.
2. Business owners are facing more “pressure” to make their businesses green than ever. But becoming an environmentally-friendly, energy-efficient facility costs money. Scammers are taking advantage of this by dangling the carrot of false rebates and useless energy-saving plug in devices.
3. Tax and bank fee refunds are another common scam. Neither the tax office nor your bank will e-mail you about money owed to you, and they won’t ask you for bank details up front.
4. You may receive an e-mail on your smartphone about special downloads. Be cautious; these typically contain malicious spyware, designed to harvest information from your phone, such as financial details.
5. Investment and real estate seminars – not all are fake, but be wary of seminars for which you are asked to invest large sums of money up front.
6. If you receive a call or invoice demanding that you pay for an advertisement you’ve placed in a publication you’ve never heard of, chances are it’s a scam.
7. Beware of the overpayment scam, in which a “customer” will send a check for an amount more than the quoted price you gave. You may not realize until you have refunded the difference in cash that you’ve been scammed; when the check bounces and you pay for it out of pocket.
8. Scammers will often try to trick a business owner into providing his credit card details or a PIN number.
9. Stay away from work from home offers. These often require you to pay for tools, training or materials up front, and then the con artist disappears.
10. If a stranger asks you to transfer money from them, it is most certainly a scam. The con usually involves the promise of a commission, usually about 15 percent, for receiving money into your bank account and then transferring it out again.
Tags: identity theft business scams, small business identity theft
