Source: Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash
This week, The Con Artist published a special series on the various forms of business identity theft. In case you missed it, here is what we covered:
How Criminals Use AI to Mimic Your Boss’s Voice | January 27th, 2020
The FBI says Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams netted thieves more than $26 billion between 2016 and 2019 alone. In a common version of the BEC scam, an employee in a company’s accounting department wires money somewhere, based on what appears to be a legitimate email from the CEO. To verify the legitimacy of the request, employees are advised to make a phone call to their boss, rather than relying on an email. But as it turns out, you may not be able to trust voice instructions either. (6 minute read)
The Big Business of Stealing from Small Businesses | January 28th, 2020
For as little as $10, anyone can masquerade as a business or name themselves director of an existing company. To execute this, bad actors navigate to a local Secretary of State's online portal and begin the process of “requesting changes” to their target company’s official records. These changes can be made in just a few clicks and will be accepted by the state, no questions asked. Once the records are changed, scammers can easily impersonate their targets to access corporate credit lines and other business assets. And by the time the rightful business owners realize what happened, it can be too late — leaving them saddled with bad credit or fighting to get their property back. (7 minute read)
The Art of Getting Rich by Stealing Pennies | January 29th, 2020
One of the many twists in business identity theft schemes is something called transaction laundering, or “factoring”. Transaction laundering occurs when criminals mimic a legitimate business by using their credentials to set up a fake company. From there, they can apply to various payment processing merchants and get approved to authorize transactions — often using stolen credit cards — for non-existent products and services. The high demand for payment processors has created an expectation of instant onboarding and fast turnaround times for businesses, making it difficult for these companies to monitor the transaction portfolios of their clients. Because of this, laundering operations often go undetected for long periods of time, making it a profitable endeavor for criminals. (11 minute read)
Corporate ID Thieves Are After Your Credit Report | January 30th, 2020
It’s a well-known fact that credit reports are a staple of modern commerce and credit decision-making, which is why millions of consumers and businesses rely on them every day. Like consumer creditworthiness, businesses rely on their credit score to assist with cash flow and fund large purchases. However, there are two critical differences between business credit reports and consumer credit reports — and these differences are precisely what makes this crime so attractive to identity thieves. (10 minute read)
The Engines of Tax Fraud: Stolen Business EINs | January 31st, 2020
An employer identification number (EIN) is to your business what a social security number (SSN) is to you as a consumer — acting as a unique identifier for all things tax-related. Unfortunately, EINs are not protected in the same manner as SSNs, and finding a company’s tax ID number is relatively easy for business identity thieves. In its most basic form, stolen EINs are used to file fraudulent tax returns — by reporting false income and withholding — in order to receive false tax refunds. As the IRS continues to rely on outdated filing systems, the government is hemorrhaging more and more money to these bad actors every year. (6 minute read)
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