Business Fraud Awareness, Prevention & Reporting Resources
The agencies below provide resources to help you protect your identity and financial well being as well as reporting tools if you are a fraud victim.
U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Cybersecurity Resource Page
The SBA provides a great resource and tool for small to medium sized businesses. The SBA has a cybersecurity page that provides learning resources and tools to help prevent businesses from becoming a victim of cybercrime.
Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
IC3 is a joint effort between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The IC3 accepts internet crime related complaints from individuals that have been defrauded.
Department of Homeland Security—Stop.Think.Connect Small Business Resource
The Department of Homeland Security provides a wealth of resources to help protect your business and provide cybersecurity awareness for small to midsize businesses.
Business and Commercial Customer Fraud FAQs
- In some instances, like card fraud, an affidavit or a police report won’t be required for a fraud claim. Regulations regarding card transactions allow the bank to pursue recovery without written documentation. In some instances, we may ask for proof that you engaged with the relevant vendor or merchant in an attempt to resolve the situation as that documentation assists investigators with decisions on how to best attempt recovery.
- Other fraud types like wire fraud, check fraud or Automated Clearing House (ACH) fraud, are most common to business and commercial customers and, therefore, often require a police report and a bank-approved, notarized declaration of loss. This documentation serves several purposes for the bank. Most notably for customers, it expedites our ability to pursue recovery of your funds from other financial institutions and confirms for all parties involved that our customer was, in fact, a victim of some type of financial loss.
- Much like your personal account, daily monitoring of items posting to your account is critical. If a fraudulent item is found, call the bank immediately. We will take steps designed to prevent additional fraud, document the incident, and attempt recovery of funds. The first 24 hours offer the best chance of recovering funds, so acting quickly is critical.
- If your organization does not have the resources to perform daily monitoring, Positive Pay services can be very helpful. Please contact your relationship manager or customer service for more information.
- Declining to participate in Positive Pay impacts our ability to assist you. We will no longer be able to honor most fraudulent check claims against your account. We will attempt to recover lost funds on your behalf but cannot guarantee success.
- When you experience fraud, the restriction on your account is to prevent further fraudulent charges. This allows NBT to monitor transactions posted to your account and help prevent future fraud losses.
- The Treasury Management Team will contact you about fraud prevention solutions, including Positive Pay, for your account. This will allow the account to remain open and enable you to review and authorize future transactions in your account.
- The sooner you provide the required documentation, the sooner we can work to resolve your case. Our goal is to resolve your case within 30 days. Promptly submitting your documentation may help speed up the process.
- If NBT is working to recover funds from another financial institution, the process may take time. Your account will be credited once the funds are received. Fund transfers between financial institutions can take time, especially when fraud cases require investigations by both institutions. Several factors can affect timing. Our goal is to credit your account within one business day of receiving recovered funds.
- Call the bank immediately. Fraudulent wire transactions often result in little to no opportunity for recovery, so timing is critical. We will attempt a wire recall, but depending on timing this may not be successful.
- In all instances of wire fraud, after calling the bank you should quickly notify law enforcement and obtain a police report. You should also report your loss to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (www.IC3.gov). Once you have completed these steps, update the bank with case numbers so investigators can document our investigation.
- If the wire was transmitted internationally, and you report it to IC3.gov you may be instructed to initiate the Financial Fraud Kill chain utilizing IC3.gov. The bank cannot do this on your behalf, we can only assist Federal Law Enforcement once they are engaged.
- Two steps you can take to protect yourself against wire fraud are understanding the identity of your wire recipient and having good procedures to validate their identity.
- Using multiple checkbooks for the same company account can trigger false alerts from anti-fraud tools. These false notifications may delay our ability to respond to actual fraud.
- Positive Pay is less effective when multiple checkbooks are used, increasing the risk of duplicate or unexpected check numbers.
- A common occurrence of fraud involves stolen checks (e.g., car smash and grabs, office theft). Always secure your checks and cards!
- Stolen mail is another ongoing problem. Never leave outgoing or incoming payments in an unattended mailbox. It is a best practice to maintain control of check payments until your USPS provider takes possession of them. Theft of issued checks can lead to payee alterations or fraudulent cashing using fake identification. Stolen checks can also facilitate the creation of counterfeit checks by providing criminals with examples of your check stock.
- Electronic theft of other critical business information often occurs through vulnerable digital hardware or careless responses to malware and phishing. It can also result from hackers breaching third party databases containing your business data.
- Your vendors are also at risk for theft of business information. In a business email compromise, a criminal gains access to a vendor’s email system and redirects invoice payments. This is a significant source of fraud. Always verify with your vendors if they request payment to a new account via email. When verifying a request, use a trusted vendor phone number, not one provided in the email, which could be fraudulent.
- In instances where we are concerned about potential fraud on your account, we may take action that impacts your transaction. Our goal is to minimize any negative impact to your normal course of business. If we attempt to contact you regarding suspected transactions, a prompt response on your behalf will help reduce that risk.
