How To Protect Your Businesses Credit From Fraud | Small Business Solutions | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast Episode 109

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast with your host Allen Kopelman, and we'll be providing you educational information about business payments fintech, decentralized finance, and the technology businesses use in today's world. And in today's podcast, we're going to be talking about personal and business credit, how not to get, uh, you know, fraud on your account. Uh, a lot of that going on around right now. I mean, it happened to me during Christmas. It's, you know, whatever, it's definitely a thing that you want to be on top of. You don't want to just be making— letting your information go everywhere, signing up to websites, you know, be mindful. You know, there's a lot of ways to prevent fraud from happening. But I think as consumers, and you know, we kind of get lazy as a people. We put our trust in the things that we can't even see. So I think it's important that, uh, you know, you, you know, create good strong passwords, you know, make sure you know what you're signing up for. Um, there, you know, there's a bunch of things that you could do. And so we're gonna, we're gonna dive into that today.

So first I'm going to give 3 tips that you should do when, you know, because we're going to talk about credit as it relates to your personal credit and your business as a business, right? So there's 3 things that I, that I do. One, I have Credit Karma, okay? It's not very— it's free, okay? Now, some other times, other— some credit cards like Capital One also gives you, like, they call it CreditWise, right? If you have that card, it's free. Um, I also use Experian. Because most everybody when they're pulling credit is using either Experian or TransUnion when they pull your credit for to see if you have credit for your business or your personal. And then there's one called NAV.

NAV. Yeah.

And that one's just for business.

Yeah, that's the one I use for.

Right. So I suggest, you know, you get as many, you know, you get, you know, at least even there, even banks have them now. Yeah, banks like my bank gives you all. You just have to activate it.

Like, yeah, it's not automatically like on Truist, whatever. I don't know.

Yeah, on Truist they give you like a little thing, a little extra thing on, on, uh, Experian, like a little different twist, right? But I suggest they're free. Sign up for them and they'll send you an alert. Basically, if anybody tries to apply for credit, you're gonna see it, you know, or somebody— there's a lien put against your business or something like that. Or somebody files a UCC or any of that stuff, you're gonna get a notification from those websites. Um, NAV, I had checked that one day, right? I got an email from them. I go, oh, this is weird. And I saw that somebody was trying to put a UCC on my business. So I contacted the company. I says, we never did business with you. They said, oh, oops, wrong person, with somebody else with a similar type name, not even in Florida, but they were looking to, you know, get somebody's attention. Ah, so let me tell you a couple of stories of things that happen all the time here in the office. So people apply for merchant account online, they answer like a— hit a landing page they hit the website, they fill out the Apply Now button, or they fill out a lead form, or they contact us through another lead form, or we get some leads from other sources we have. And then what happens is we look at those leads and we check to see, you know, oh, the name of the business, the address, and then a couple of telltale signs are You know, did the person give us like, you know, justin@justinsairconditioning.com, or did he give us justin—

or not even Justin, it'll be whatever.

Yeah, something— it could be even like airconditioning@gmail.com or something like that. So we look at that, that, that's a minus. Does we go to the website and check to see, does the website phone number and the phone number they gave Is it even close to the same or the same area code? But someone might give their cell phone number instead of a business phone number. And then, you know, those are the— and then we, you know, if they gave us like their ID, we looked— is not all the time you can get a fake ID. Or does the business check actually look like a business check, or does it look like some personal check or something somebody made in Photoshop? Sometimes you can tell, sometimes you can't tell, you know, you don't know. But what— one— some of the things that we do is we'll call up like the, the business, we'll call the person on the phone. And one thing we don't like is we don't really like if they're using one of those text-to-voice numbers or a Google phone number. That's already— you got— you lost points for that because we want to get an actual cell phone or a landline. We do not deal in those numbers. And we also have another— we have like a website we go to, and it can check the phone number and tell you whether it's a landline or a cell phone. It's not so accurate on who the owner is, but you'll know whether it's a cell phone or a landline because otherwise it comes up N/A, right? You know, so you know that's, uh, one of those, um voice, you know, one of those fake whatever, a Google number or Text-to-Voice, or there's a whole bunch of these services actually called SIP, SIP, you know. And some scammers actually buy these SIP lines and then they can use fake phone numbers that they just make up on the fly. Just gives them like available phone number and it'll just ring to their computer or something. Don't— I don't know, technology, man. Yeah, technology is good and bad. And then, and then what we'll do is, is even if the person does answer the phone, we will call the phone number on the website and ask for that person. And so I'm going to tell you two brief stories. One, uh, I had this guy call me, you know, call up. I didn't really like the phone call. The business had three locations. He didn't know a lot about the business because, you know, I like to ask people simple question. Like, if I called you up, Justin, and I said, oh, you have a website company, you'd probably tell— talk to me for 10 or 15 minutes telling me all about your company. Easily, right? So this guy didn't— it couldn't answer very many questions, you know. And I threw easy stuff out that he would know, like, oh, how many locations do you have? He said, oh, just the one. I'm looking at the website, there's 3 locations. So I knew this was not the guy. So after I got him off the phone, I called the business. I asked for the owner. The owner's like, don't bother me with this, blah blah blah blah blah. He kind of cursed me out. I said, I'll gladly send you this information, but you know, if I was you, I would be checking my credit, my business credit. Lo and behold, about a month later, guy calls me up with the police and the FBI. This person managed to open up half a dozen merchant accounts, ran up over $50 grand in fraudulent charges. Now all those credit card companies started sending letters to his business, and they were like, how did you know that it was fake? I'm like, are you guys kidding me? Like, I told the cops, I'm like, you know, whoever opened these accounts just did zero checking. They just sent it— the guy paperwork, the guy sent it back. They did it. They gave the guy the virtual terminal. That's also a big key because we did a podcast. What's a virtual terminal?

Right.

Okay. I know what it is. Justin now knows what it is. Right. But it's not like a— it's a technical term. It's not like a— it's not like a term unless you were familiar with— if you were familiar with—

you would call it a cash register.

No, but I'm saying if you were familiar or you would say, oh, PayPal, do you have a PayPal?

But I'm saying you would call it a cash register. I feel like.

Well, I don't know what— it's virtual. I'm just saying a virtual— I'm just saying it's more of a technical term.

Yeah, it's super technical.

Somebody that's been at a merchant account before, that's the only way they would know about it, right? Yes. If you used it before, you would know about it.

Because I mean, I guess I've heard it so much in the past year that I've been here that I'm like, it's like embedded in my brain, right?

Or someone will ask for like, oh, I want to authorize—

I didn't call PayPal a virtual terminal, right?

You called it PayPal. PayPal, right? People call it by the name PayPal, banking, AuthNet, NMI. They'll just— they'll say, oh, I need some— something like that, something like PayPal.

So those are just a virtual terminal, if you—

in essence, yes, right? Because you could do it all on— so, so, you know, so the guy— so I told the police that, you know, I was on the phone with the police twice.

What did the cop say when he said that?

So the cop said, why did you call the business? So I said, well, I wanted to warn the guy that somebody is trying to defraud his identity, right? And I said, business owner didn't really care.

What did the cops say?

The cops like, okay. And I told them, I said, the odds are that this person might have enough information to open up a merchant account. Now, some companies might open the merchant account with federal tax ID only, right? Or maybe they have, um, they're using, um, what's that, correct, LexisNexis, right?

I guess my point— I don't know, I'm not— my point, but my question would be about this is what the hell are they going to do now that they have a merchant account?

Well, they could go get some fake credit cards and then run some scam credit cards. You know, the dark web, that you'll buy some credit cards.

You know, I never dabbled in the dark web.

No, but everybody's information's on the dark web. I log into my credit card, my like, oh, your info is on the dark web. Okay, great, it's there. Everything but my social. My social hasn't been exposed, thank God. But you know that otherwise, if it is, then you better lock your credit.

You know, I had to just lock my credit.

So you have to lock your credit if your social has ever been exposed. Your social was exposed, we found out. I remember that.

And, uh, shout out to you guys out in California just giving away money for free. Some guy lives in California, got over 50 grand of unappointed unemployment benefits, but that was not me. I lived in South Florida, Fort Lauderdale.

It's crazy. And it happened to me too where somebody got my social years ago, and I went to— and I sent in my tax return, then they sent me a bill back for like $50 grand. Yeah, I was like, $50 grand for what? And I get on the phone, you know, there was no email, and they take forever to deal with you, the IRS.

Remember I was telling you about— I got a random bill from the IRS? Yeah. So I talked to a tax professional, right? Do you know that the IRS can just put on and put a number up saying that you owe them if you've never filed taxes, or if you don't file taxes, or however your Social Security landed on someone's lap and they look at your whatever, your file and they're like, ah, he hasn't filed taxes, a real one, he owes us $3,242.

Yeah, they just make a number up.

Literally, that's, that's literally can make up a number. They send you a bill and they sent me a bill, so I call and I'm like, so how, how can they come up with this number? There's absolutely no rhyme or reason for them to come up with the number. Um, the woman said that it could be for any, it could be a total of your tax returns for the 5 years previous or, or whatever. There's absolutely no algorithm or ever anything at all that she could give. You know what she told me I had to do? I had to tell them that they're full of crap. Like, I have to fight it. Like, literally, I have to fill out some paperwork and tell them, nuts, that it's wrong. You— there's no way that I owe this much in taxes. I didn't make that much amount of money. And then they'll fix it, right?

I had to go—

until then, they'll just want you to pay it.

I had to go through the same thing, and I, I had to get affidavits that I was not— never worked in Arizona. It was a little crazy. I was living in Florida.

I signed two affidavits already.

It was nuts. So now this guy's getting 5, 6 letters in the mail. This guy got fake credit cards, probably bought them on the dark web, then he charged them up Did the business owner call you back? Yeah, well, he called me with the police.

I'm saying, what did he say when he was talking to you?

Oh, the business owner? He's like, I wish I would have listened to you when you told me I should watch my— I should have done something. Yeah, when he didn't listen. And then just the other day, the—

my business happened like 2 months ago too.

Someone else was calling like, hey, it's happened like in the last few months, it's happened at least 4 times. Then the other day, Anna, my assistant, answers the phone and it's another guy who we had called and warned. And he told me he got bills in the mail from 2 or 3 credit card processors, um, with chargebacks over 10 grand. And I told him, I said, well, there's only one thing for you to do— call the cops. You got to call the police. You gotta, um You gotta do a police report and then send it to those companies. And you gotta watch your credit because they're gonna try to put it on your personal credit. And believe it or not, I think if you have like LexisNexis or a tool like that and you put in all the business information and the federal tax ID, I bet you there's a pretty good chance that software will give you the, uh, last 4 of that person's social.

I wouldn't doubt it.

I have no idea because I know—

I mean, it's kind of ridiculous if you look online. I mean, no, but you can— most websites have your last 4 pretty visible.

So we've had a few, a few, um, do we ask for socials? Yeah, but I'm saying we've had a few people like call us back and they're like having a big problem. Now I don't know who these credit card processors are that just open these accounts willy-nilly but they shouldn't be doing that. No, I mean, we call every single person. Like, even if they go and apply online, we call them, we make sure it's a real person, we check the address, you know. We, we—

that's amazing to me that there's companies out here that are just like, oh yeah, yeah, well, you know, you have a big company, you know. I don't want to—

Jim Bellucci, I don't want to throw—

what?

I don't want to throw names out, but you have mega-sized company. I know that they got people in a cubicle, they need— they're on a quota. They're just going to sign the person up and then let it fly. And then it goes to underwriting. Underwriting looks at, they go, oh, $10,000 a month. Oh, looks like a real business. Winner! Let's, let's approve it.

Boom.

And then they ship a terminal out. Next thing you know, the guy's got fraudulent credit cards. They might even be friends' credit cards., and then they just all do a chargeback, and then the guy— the money went to the bank account, but then they start hunting down the real business owner and all that. It's crazy. And you know, when I was at this conference, we were— I was at a conference in Atlanta, they were talking about, you know, fraud and businesses here. I just talked to— just before we got on the podcast, I get a phone call from a guy who's a wholesaler, right? Um, one of his new sales guys took an order over the phone for a couple hundred bucks, shipped the stuff to the person. Then he got another order for another couple hundred bucks, shipped the stuff to the person, the same person. Then the guy placed another order for $2,700. The business owner never— they never checked the address where the stuff was going. They never asked the guy for a business license or anything to prove that it was a business, right? Just took the credit card over the phone, keyed it in, boom. It got shipped to this logistics company. Okay, this is one of the oldest scams. We call it the freight forwarder scam. I mean, I could just go through a whole list of scams, but the freight forwarder scam, that's a really good one. It's not a good one. It's a really scummy one.

It's smart.

That's where, like, I place an order with Justin's company. I can vent, you know, they always do the same thing. They start off with a small order. For a couple hundred bucks. Justin's like, oh great, I made a sale. Boom, check. Ships out the stuff, it goes to a freight— he's not— he doesn't look the address up to see if it's what the guy said it is. It goes to this freight forwarder's office. That freight forwarder knows to forward the package wherever it's supposed to really go, to the scammer. Could be out of the country even. Could be, you don't know. So then the, um, then, then they do it again and then they get you for a big one because now you think the guy's a good customer because he bought a couple hundred bucks. He bought a couple hundred bucks, then boom. And I've seen it where they've tried to— we had a guy years ago that, um, the people told him, oh, we're going to give you an extra $1,000 and you give it to the freight forwarder when they get there. You know, a check for $1,000. I told the guy, I go, dude, that is a scam, and you will get scammed, and you will lose the $1,000, you will lose all the money. He said— he told me, goes, no, you're preventing me from making a sale. I go, no. So the guy didn't listen to me, fulfilled the order, and it was printing too. It was a bit— it was like a printing place. It was a whole bunch of printing. Guess what happened? They They ran the credit card. The next day, the chargeback came in before, and they've already printed all the stuff. And then the freight forwarder showed up. Obviously, they didn't give the stuff to the freight forwarder because they got a chargeback. I mean, you know, this is a scam, man. It has scam all over it. You know, even like, I have some— I have another guy that sells toners online. You know, when toner used to be big, right? You know, now it's not so big anymore. I mean, I think if I had to buy like another printer, I would get like that EcoTank thing from Epson.

I hear it's a real pain in the—

well, no, it's a pain in the butt to refill, but I don't know, looks pretty cool.

Also, there is a service that people come out and do it though.

Yeah, there's people that come out and do it, but the— I've even seen like rental now where you can rent like the printer and then they'll come put like a really nice printer in your office, but we don't print enough paper to do really nuts with that. But some people use that. They— that— those companies, you know, went out and bought like a lot of used printers when offices closed down and stuff. And now they just fix them up and rent them out till they break, and then they shit— they throw them in the garbage. Yeah, excuse me, bad word.

Shit can.

Oh, sorry, that, that used to be on the 7 dirty words you couldn't to say. No, so you got to work, you got to watch out your personal credit and your business credit. It's very, very important. So the tips were, you know, Experian, TransUnion, check your bank, check your credit card, see what they offer you for free. NAV, NAV, that's for business credit.

Yeah, I mean, because when you sign up to like, uh, whatchamacallit, even Experian, right? I'm pretty sure you can activate CreditWise and Experian.

No, CreditWise is from Capital One. That's their—

okay. Yeah, well, not CreditWise, but there's something that's similar inside of—

yeah, yeah. And Experian, they'll watch your credit. They don't usually watch your business credit. No, but they—

NAV does a great job with that though. Yeah, NAV will give you notifications every time you make a— you pay your bill.

Yeah, depends on your vendors. If your vendors are connecting it, then it's reported. So, but most credit cards report on your personal, not to your business. Some report to your business, they report to your business, but then they don't report.

I have a tip too. Also, you should do some, like, when you're operating a business, you know, do some, you know, reverse lookups. You know, look up yourself, look up your business every now and then. Check out to see if there's any Facebook pages that have been created that aren't you, any social media handles. Make sure you know your—

no websites, nefarious websites, right?

I mean, check your email, you know what I mean?

Somebody make like your website, then they'll put like .net, .info, .shop.

Yeah, anybody who doesn't have SSL certificate attached to your website, you are tripping. People are leaving your website as soon as they get there because they don't see the little lock. It used to be green. Google stopped because they said it was It was like, uh, being— I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for?

I don't know. They kind of stopped doing that.

No, they stopped doing it because it made it seem like, oh well, he's got a green check mark but I don't, right? So it was like too much favoritism. Yeah, it made it look like they were being favored. The other websites were being favorited, but it— what it's obviously not is just for security purposes, right?

Yeah. And now like a lot of the, a lot of the hosting companies like GoDaddy, Bluehost, WP—

whatever, they're giving you free SSL.

Yeah, that's like managed WordPress hosting or managed hosting. And then those managed hostings all include SSL certificates. I remember when I had managed hosting—

might not work best for your company, right? Don't— you know, obviously, if you have a— but if you have a small business and you only got a couple domains, managed WordPress hosting will get the job done.. But if you're, you know, if you're an e-commerce store, you might want to look at something that's a little bit more robust, I can handle the traffic. But a managed WordPress hosting account usually typically comes with SSL certificate, hosting, subdomains, so that you can build landing pages for your products and stuff like that. So yeah, man, I mean, I would definitely do that. Yeah, it usually comes with like extra little security features, an SSL certificate, I mean, if you're buying a domain, see, the thing is people don't even understand, right? Like, so they think, oh, I just bought my domain, you know, allen.com, now what? Well, now you need to find the hosting, you know. And so that's where the hosting comes with the features. Typically when you buy a domain, it doesn't, you know, you know, you might get an email address with it for free or whatever, but other than that No, you have to go to the hosting provider platform, whatever, you know, which one it is. And there's plenty of security.

Yeah, you got to secure everything down. So make sure, be careful with your credit, business credit, your personal credit, and, and, and, and have proper reporting set up so that you can find out if anything is being reported on your business. And if someone calls you and says, hey, Did you open a merchant account? Don't ignore that person. Find out why they're calling and make sure that you take care of, like, whatever it is, because you will— like these other people, 2, 3 people in the last couple months— you will start getting letters in the mail from people trying to collect this money. Well, that's our podcast for today. We talked about business and personal credit and security for your business. So thank you for listening. B2B Vault, peace out. Follow us on social @B2BVault.

The website, B2BVault.info.

And you can book a meeting with us, text the word book, B-O-O-K, to 954-827-9818. So everybody have a great day. Peace.