1. Advance Fee Loan Scams.
Whether it’s offered in a newspaper ad, on the Internet, or by email, this scam offers money at reasonable rates – if you send them money. They may say they need the money for insurance purposes or to get the money across the border. Whatever the reason, you’ll never see that money again – or the money they were supposedly going to loan your business.

2. Fraudulent Billing Scams.
Your business receives an invoice for goods or services that you haven’t ordered. The hope of the scammers sending these out is that your business will just pay up. Easy money for them. Easy loss for you.

3. Business Identity Theft.
Identity theft itself is the fastest growing fraud in North America, according to the Better Business Bureau, and business identity theft is growing apace. Just as someone can steal your personal identity, your business’s identity can be stolen. Once stolen, the thieves can use your business name and financial information to open a bank account and run up expenses.

4. Work-At-Home Scams.
Preying on people who want to have home-based businesses, these scams offer the opportunity to “make big bucks” working at home. Sometimes the ads say all you have to do is own a computer. Other times, the work-at-home scam involves stuffing envelopes or assembly work. The scam is simple; you pay for the information or the materials you supposedly need. Rather than being the key to making money, what you get is useless.

5. Credit Card Scams.
Fraudulent use of credit cards is also on the rise. In the standard credit card scam, someone will call and place an order, offering to pay with fraudulently obtained credit card information. The business fills the order, but later is informed that the credit card was stolen and the amount of the transaction will be charged back to the business’s account.