You might normally think of victims of business fraud as clueless consumers duped by a devious salespeople. However, business fraud exists at all levels, and many victims are actually other businesses. A surprising number of businesses fall prey to fraud, allowing non-existent, or otherwise fraudulent businesses, to establish lines of credit. It is almost always impossible for even an experienced and talented collection agency to collect from a nonexistent business, making this type of fraud extremely costly, especially for newer or smaller businesses.
The good news is that most cases of this kind of fraud can be prevented with
a minimum amount of caution and research. Con artists who commit business fraud can be extremely talented at manipulating emotions and preventing otherwise sensible business owners from doing research. As a commercial collection agency, we regularly get claims where research has not been done and we discover that the information provided was either misleading or outright fraudulent. In either case, it is no surprise these invoices were not collected on by our clients.
Some easy ways to check for fraud include: carefully reviewing printed materials, checking addresses, checking references, making phone calls, and conducting a credit report on new clients. Many credit reports cost as little as little as 3 cents a report. Our Credit Report Survey guide can help you choose the credit report that makes the most sense for your business.
Our complete article about fraud detection contains eight free, or low cost, methods of detecting fraud, most of which take as little as 5-10 minutes to carry out. Spending ten minutes researching a potential client or customer could save you thousands of dollars and hours of frustration.
At The Kaplan Group we hope you never need our services, especially due to fraudulent business practices. But, if you do find yourself with unpaid invoices, for whatever reason, we’re here to help.
