The Expert Podcast

So what are the top scams we're now seeing for 2023 as an investigative agency You know we keep track of the different types of frauds that clients are bringing to us And in 2022 and 21 a lot of them were. things like cryptocurrency or blockchain type scams or…fake investments in different types of high return. offering So…the scammers would say look we're going to double your money in a month Right? The pig butchering type scam. 2023 So a little bit of a change.

One of the things we're seeing more of now and this has been kind of a trend for the last three four years. Are. Family law case frauds What does this mean? This means divorce and probate frauds. Anytime there's a family event somebody dies in a family There's a divorce, some type of even child support or even.somebody who goes into hospice or into extended care. It's an opportunity for other family members to take more of their fair share of the assets Look, when somebody dies, the person who died has assets that may have bank accounts or real estate business assets vehicles, even smaller assets like jewelry. And many times those are supposed to go to other heirs family members sometimes maybe not. According to a certain designated wishes of the person sometimes called a will or a probate.

Well guess what? Sometimes people in that family figure that they either deserve more or they just want to take more. Because they think that it's, you know no one's going to know. Well what happens is those people will have insight access They may be able to write checks from that bank account. They may be able to transfer a real estate without nobody knowing. they may be able to take a vehicle that's maybe hidden in a garage or hidden in a, a barn somewhere and put it in their name before anybody knows. Sometimes they'll do things like switch beneficiaries on life insurance. Right. When there's a divorce parties will have hidden bank accounts They'll have hidden real estate. They'll put money into somebody else's name so that the other partner doesn't know about it.

This is family law fraud probate fraud divorce fraud Very very common We see it all the time. In almost every case where we are hired to look for hidden assets we find hidden assets. If you suspect that there are. Fraudulent conveyances or fraudulent transfers You're probably right It's almost never that the client thinks there might be something fishy going on in there Wrong. Almost always You're right. That's number one.

The other type of scam that we see is what's called the AI scam. This is when a business. or company. Is trying to get investors or… maybe even customers. And they're claiming that they use AI or some type of artificial intelligence or chat GPT in their business operations. And it's a hot button, right It's a bandwagon type thing. Many companies. I think that if their customers or investors believe that they're an AI company, that they're going to get more money either more investor money or more. Customer money.

Well guess what a lot of these companies don't really have AI, they're paying people labor, human people labor to do the work that they're saying AI is doing. And trying to use that to get a better advantage for themselves. Sometimes they do have some types of automation but none of this is really groundbreaking Some of this automation are apps or technology that had been around for 20 years. So it's nothing new It's nothing AI So anytime you hear AI and that's the reason you're looking to invest or maybe to buy from a company. Have them verify it. You know show them how the AI works show that have them show you how there. Their system uses AI And if they can't demonstrate it they say well it's proprietary or. It's too complicated. Maybe move on to something else or look at something that's more transparent.

The other type of fraud is a business sale fraud We're seeing a lot of this. In businesses for sale. A company will represent They have a certain amount of revenue. We have a million dollars in sales and they'll put the value on their business based on having that much. activity that much sales that much revenue we'll come to find out They don't have that much revenue What they've done is they've created bank accounts and they put activity through that bank account. Maybe it's just deposits from another account that they have, maybe they're putting their own money in and taking it back out. These bank accounts aren't really representative of actual sales there's activity there, but they're not really related to the underlying activity of the company the sales activity the marketing activity.

So anytime you're buying a business, make sure that you verify that first of all the numbers are correct You don't want to take a P and L from somebody at face value You want to look at the actual bank accounts to show that there's actual revenue, but then also trace back that revenue to actual sales. Sometimes the bank accounts that buyers are shown have nothing to do with the business there. Another business or related business, right. Maybe it's an account that just has, Income from interest on money in another bank account. So you want to make sure you're verifying not only the money's actually changing hands but then it's for the reason that is being claimed that business is in. operation for.

The last type of fraud we see qua. a bit, even this day and age Is Fake transfer fraud So anytime you're a company or an individual and you have to do wire transfers ACH payments even check payments. You want to verify that you're making it to the actual party that you're supposed to be many companies have accounts payable invoices. That they get every day. Purchase orders…and they're supposed to pay let's say a thousand dollars to pay for a computer or $2,000 for some service.

Well your company. Accountant bookkeeper. Or even an admin person will get an email that says look. We changed our bank account make your payment to this. Account right Or they'll get a accounts payable an invoice from a company X Y Z. You know services and that sounds like a company you do business with will come to find out it's a scam. And it's a company or a fraudster or a scammer that has discovered the names of. companies you do business with either by hacking your email. Infiltrate in your network, or even just finding public information on social media that you do business with companies, and they'll make up a fake invoice for that company name, with faults payment information. So you either send a credit card payment a check and ACH or wire transfer to the wrong company Now you're out the money then the real vendor that you did business with, they're still looking for their money because they really never got it.

So that's the other type of payment diversion fraud that we see. Much less things like embezzlement employee scams, that's all separate issue These are the types of scams and frauds that we see in 2023 that you want to be aware of. So you don't have losses that either affect you personally or as a company. From being an ongoing concern and being able to do the marketing business development and growth that you try to do every single day, don't have it taken away from you because you fell victim to fraud.