Common Small Business Scams
From Entrepreneur Magazine:
They contact you by phone, fax and e-mail. They’re ready with invoices for you to pay, services for you to order and PO boxes to collect your money. Modern scammers have thought of everything: The only thing that stands between them and your money is keen awareness on your part.
What types of scams are most popular these days? From overpayments that need a refund to inquiries about selling your business, the following “smart” approaches are luring even cautious entrepreneurs.
A “Heavy” Pre-Pay Shipping Scam
“As soon as the TTY operator told me the call was coming from Nigeria, while the woman had me on hold, I knew something was up,” notes Bruce Webber of Webber Floor Covering in Maple Heights, Ohio. Webber had received calls from TTY operators before, working on behalf of the hearing impaired. In this case, it was a call from a woman who wanted to order tile for a church in Alaska. But when she put him on hold for a few moments to try to send him an e-mail, Webber commented to the operator on the lengthy wait.
“I’m not sure if she did it on purpose or just let it slip…typically they don’t tell you where the caller is calling from, but she did” says Webber, who had read in a floor covering industry magazine that such scams were going on. The idea of using a TTY operator is to make the call untraceable and possibly to play on the sympathy of the victim, who believes he or she is helping someone with a hearing disability. When Webber told the operator he didn’t realize the call was from overseas, the caller overheard him and quickly got off the line. She never rang back.





