#fraud-prevention
Fraud Prevention
Proactive strategies and controls to prevent financial fraud in your business
Cargo Theft Surged 60% to $725 Million: What Small Carriers Need to Know About Tighter Underwriting and Rising Premiums in 2026
Cargo theft losses hit $725 million in 2025, up 60%, with average theft at $273,990. Small carriers face 18 percent cargo premium hikes, theft sublimits, and stricter underwriting on high-risk lanes—learn what thieves target, where risk moved, and the bookkeeping that keeps coverage intact.
The 10-Year PPP Fraud Clock: Why Forgiven Loans Stay Enforceable Until 2030
Congress set a 10-year statute of limitations for PPP fraud, so a loan funded in 2020 can be charged until 2030 and forgiveness is not a defense. This guide covers False Claims Act liability, the five eligibility tripwires still generating cases, and the six-year record-retention rule borrowers must meet.
How to Switch Business Bank Accounts Without Missing Payroll or Triggering a Fraud Hold
A six-week playbook for moving business bank accounts—inventory every ACH, wire, and payroll rail first; seed the new account to dodge Regulation CC holds; move payroll last with a prenote; and run both accounts in parallel with daily reconciliation before closing.
When Your EIN Gets Stolen: A Small Business Guide to IRS Letters 5263C, 6042C, and Business Identity Theft
IRS Letter 6042C verifies a specific business return; Letter 5263C verifies the entity itself on file from Form SS-4, and both carry a 30-day response window that, if missed, stalls your returns, refunds, and overpayment applications. This guide explains how thieves obtain an EIN, the tax and non-tax red flags that signal fraud, exactly what to fax back in each case, when Form 8822-B is required within 60 days of a responsible-party change, and a monthly-quarterly-annual monitoring routine that catches misuse early.
When 5% of Your Customers Drive 40% of Your Returns: Serial Returners, Returns Reserves, and Refund Liability
ASC 606 treats a right of return as variable consideration, so an $80,000 sales month with a 9% historical return rate is $72,800 of net revenue, a $7,200 refund liability, and a recoverable-inventory asset — not $80,000 booked as final. This guide shows how to build a category-weighted reserve from 12 months of your own data, flag the 5 to 10% of buyers who generate 30 to 40% of returns, and apply graduated account limits that stay documented and defensible.
Anyone Can File a Fake UCC Lien Against Your Business. Rhode Island's SB 3212 Just Changed the Rules.
Rhode Island's SB 3212, signed in June 2026, lets business owners remove fraudulent UCC filings through an administrative complaint, authorizes the Department of State to refuse suspicious filings, and requires misleading "annual report" solicitation letters to disclose that they are advertisements. The same defenses — quarterly UCC searches, entity-record checks, and fee verification — work in every state.
AI-Generated Receipts Are Now Most of Expense Fraud: How to Protect Your Small Business
AI-generated fake receipts rose from 0% to 70.8% of detected expense fraud in fourteen months, averaging $101 per claim, and small businesses can counter it by matching receipts to actual transaction records instead of judging document appearance.
Employee Dishonesty Insurance and Fidelity Bonds: What They Cover and What They Don't
A fidelity bond (employee dishonesty insurance) covers employee theft, forged checks, and payroll fraud that general liability and property policies exclude, and it's legally required for anyone handling a 401(k) plan's assets under ERISA.
Nacha's 2026 ACH Fraud Monitoring Rule: What Every Business Must Do
Nacha's Phase 2 ACH fraud monitoring rule took effect June 19, 2026, requiring nearly every business that originates ACH payments to run a documented, risk-based fraud monitoring process covering account ownership verification, change monitoring, anomaly detection, and audit trails.
FTC AI-Washing Crackdown: What Small Businesses Should Know Before Buying an "AI-Powered" Tool
The FTC has filed 13 "AI-washing" enforcement cases since September 2024, including a May 2026 action against marketing firms that sold small businesses a fake "AI-powered" listening tool for $930,000 in penalties — here's a vetting checklist before you buy any AI-branded product.
How to Stop Deepfake Invoice Fraud: An AP/AR Prevention Guide for Small Businesses
Deepfake fraud cost Arup $25.6 million in one faked video call, and voice cloning now needs just three seconds of audio. This guide shows small businesses how callback verification, two-person approval for banking changes, and periodic vendor-file cleanup stop synthetic vendors, cloned executive voices, and doctored invoices.
Where Did $90 Billion in Inventory Just Go? A Small Retailer's Guide to Booking Shrinkage Correctly
U.S. retailers lost $90–112 billion to inventory shrinkage in the latest reporting cycle, an average shrink rate near 1.6% of sales. This guide shows small retailers how to book shrink in a dedicated expense account instead of burying it in COGS — with the exact journal entries, cycle-counting schedules, materiality thresholds, and the process fixes behind the ~70% of shrink that isn't theft.