St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce members recently heard from an expert who offered insights on protecting business and personal finances from fraud, scams and spoofing.
Bobby Fultz, a fraud investigations manager with Vystar Credit Union and former Secret Service agent, spoke to members Oct. 23 via Zoom during the Chamber’s virtual financial wellness workshop.
According to Fultz, one scam that is prevalent today is the “business email compromise.”
An attacker imitates a company using an email domain that looks like one from the company but is so slightly altered that the receiver may not notice the change. For example, the scammer might substitute a numeral 1 for a lower-case letter L.
Then the scammer sends an email to a customer of the company requesting a payment to an account set up by the scammer. The customer makes the payment in good faith but the money is diverted to the scammer.
“Once it’s sent, it’s gone,” Fultz said. “As soon as that wire’s sent to their account, they’re going to take that money, and it’s going to be elsewhere. I’d say 90% of the time, they’re not going to get that money back.”
Fultz recommended calling the company by a number that’s already familiar – not a new number – and checking on any changes before sending money.
He also suggested doing all financial transactions on a stand-alone computer not being used for anything else.
On a less technical level, he said checkbooks and other such materials should be locked up somewhere, and that it’s a good idea to keep less of a paper trail.
“People still dumpster-dive,” he said. “If you do keep a paper trail and you’re getting rid of your stuff, put it in a shredder.”
Fultz also addressed spoofing, a practice where a scammer tricks caller IDs to show a false phone number. The person answering may see the number of a trusted financial institution and, believing it to be genuine, gives out whatever information the caller requests.
Again, contacting the institution by a number that’s already familiar could expose the scam.
Fultz said callers claiming to be a utility or government agency requesting payment in the form of a gift card was “a big red flag.”
He also spoke about fraudsters who pose as someone else on social media convincing victims that they are the love of their life.
He recalled a person who gave away half a million dollars in one such case. He’s seen people go so far as to sell their cars to generate money for a scammer.
“They gave away their whole life savings, and then they sold their cars to give them the last dollar they had, convinced that they were helping out,” he said.
He described how such people can even find themselves enlisted by the fraudster in a money-laundering scheme and subject to arrest.
Fultz went on to describe secret-shopper and car-wrap scams in which the target is sent a worthless check, told to deposit it and then send money on to another place.
Among Fultz’s recommendations were checking your credit history twice a year, using different consumer credit reporting agencies; having a good IT person for your company; and having fraud insurance for your company.
