094 | Fraud Happens Fast: What Every Business Owner Needs to Know with Megan Kinney

Patrick: [00:00:00] Have you ever stopped to think how easy it might be for someone to steal from you, even if you’re doing everything right? I’m talking about sophisticated scams that prey on smart, successful people, business owners, entrepreneurs, even the people who teach others how to protect their assets. The truth is, in today’s world, all it takes is one phone call, one email.
For one small slip in your process and tens of thousands of dollars can vanish with almost zero chance of getting it back. Welcome back to another episode of the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast. I’m your host, Patrick Lonnergan, and today I’m joined by someone who has seen this play out far too often.
Megan Kinney, managing attorney at Land of Lincoln Legal Aid. For over a decade, Megan has been on the front lines of helping people navigate the aftermath of fraud scams and financial exploitation. In this episode, Megan and I pull back the curtain on the exact tactics scammers use to target business owners, their employees, and even their families.
You’ll hear real life stories [00:01:00] that will make you shake your head. The psychological triggers, scammers exploit to get you to act without thinking, and the simple yet powerful safeguards you can put in place to protect your business and your personal accounts. By the end of this conversation, you’ll not only understand the threats, you’ll have an action plan to make yourself and your business a much harder target.
And here’s the thing. What Megan and I are talking about today is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle, keeping more of what you earn, whether it’s through airtight fraud prevention, or advanced tax strategies. The goal is the same. Protect and maximize your wealth. If you’re ready to start building out your own tax strategy so you can keep more of your hard-earned money, head over to vital strategies.com/tax.
It’s the first step to putting a plan in place that works as hard as you do for your business. So grab a notebook, lean in, and listen closely because what you learn today could save you from making one of the most expensive mistakes of your life. On today’s show, we’ve got Megan Kinney. Megan, I’m excited about this conversation because I think [00:02:00] the, the things that we’re gonna talk about today are important to all of us.
I think. When we think about some of the, I’m gonna call ’em fraud schemes out there, I’ve seen family members affected. I’ve got friends that are entrepreneurs that have been affected. I think we don’t have to look far to, to see in the news people being impacted on a regular basis where they’ve wired or sent tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to people that they think are, you know, they need to send money to for some reason or another.
And at the end of the day, it turns out to all be. Problem. So thank you so much for joining us here today to have this conversation. I appreciate it. My pleasure. So I think when we look at the problems that the entrepreneur and people in general are facing is, you know, scams, fraud, deceit, phishing, whatever those things are, it’s just, it just feels bad, right?
Like your money’s gone and you’re not getting it back, and then we start to feel violated. Oftentimes there can be shame, like, oh my gosh, I can’t [00:03:00] believe I fell for that thing. Now we’re just unsure as to who we trust in general. And I think philosophically it shouldn’t be this easy to steal from someone who’s doing the right things.
And I’m looking forward to getting into this conversation. You know, all of this started, we were at a, one of our family members weddings. We were sitting by the pool and we were, we were talking through some of these issues and it’s like I had some friends that were impacted and you know, I just look at.
Your role as managing attorney at Land of Lincoln Legal Aid in East St. Louis, and the number of people that you get contacting you saying, Hey, we’ve been scammed. What do we do about this? And so I appreciate you just spending the time joining us here today. If it’s okay, can you give us a little bit of your background and maybe some of the things that you’re seeing out there in the world that people.
Unfortunately having to deal with,
Megan: yeah, you bet. So I’ve been at Land of Length and legal aid, so we provide pre legal services to folks. I’ve been here 13 years and I started as a staff at three. I started by advocating for folks in nursing halls and [00:04:00] then moved more into the senior citizens, Frederick.
So all of my clients were over three years old, and I would help grandparents, caregivers, and the senior citizen demographic with all sorts of types of cases that would happen, including financial exploitations that would happen to senior. So I’ve been doing this, yeah, largely for all of my law career, and given a few presentations on this through Illinois State Bar Association on preventative measures that we can do to help our seniors to make sure that they’re not victims of stands.
I’ve also served on the St. Clare County Elder Justice Council, where we talk about scams and frauds being poker treated. Seniors in our community. So this is, in my opinion, it’s kind of the, the crime of the century and it, and people are getting scammed every single day. And it is, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And it’s something I think everybody needs to be aware [00:05:00] of because it is not just somebody what your neighbors, it’s not just one of. Your community members anymore, it’s your family members. It’s somebody you know as most likely then stand out of money at this.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. That’s so true. And I, I want to, I wanna say, oh, as entrepreneurs, we have, we have it all figured out.
We’ve got our defenses up. It’s okay. Well, I have two examples. I had a friend of mine that him and his wife own a business together and she got a call and they had specific details about a former employee that. Was in legal trouble, which they knew about, which was real. And said, Hey, there’s an outstanding bench warrant.
You didn’t show up and you have to pay this fine, otherwise, you know, we’re gonna do all these bad things to you. And this was like on a Saturday and it was the actual county sheriff’s phone number, and they were freaking out. They were like, oh my gosh. You know, these are people that sort of do the right things and follow the rules.
And they’re like, I can’t believe I, you know, did this. And so they were [00:06:00] like trying to solve this problem. And, and the person didn’t wanna let him off the phone and her husband was calling, like trying to get in touch with her and was like, what is going on here? And finally like, hung up the phone, got in touch with her husband, she explained the thing, and he was like, let’s just, let’s pause for a second.
Let’s just call the number the sheriff’s department and just sort all like, get to the bottom of this. And it was a scam, right? It was totally fake, but the level of sophistication was shocking to me. Then I was in, I’m in another peer group and unfortunately one of the guys, and he spoke up, which I appreciate because I just think about some of the shame that can come with this and like the, like, I can’t believe I fell for this thing.
But he was with his daughter again, got a, I don’t know all of the details of the call, but he, he got a phone call, answered it, and again. It was something he missed from a legal point of view, and he was in trouble and he needed to send some money to sort of resolve this problem. And he had the money and he thought, I, I am not [00:07:00] interested in dealing with this.
I will just like make it go away. And after he sent the money, he figured out, like started looking into it and figured out he. Sent this money to bad actors and had tried to get the money back and there was just no, no good recourse for that. So I, I wanna highlight that this is not just stuff that’s happening.
’cause I had a family member that, you know, got a call on their home line and said, Hey, we’re Microsoft and we’re gonna do this thing. And they basically hold your computer ransom mm-hmm. Until you either pay them or not. And you know, they’ve got somebody on the phone sort of walking you through how to send a money.
And so like, I’ve been a part of that type of scheme too. But I’d be curious to hear, you know, some of the. The real world examples that you’ve come across that, you know, maybe seemed especially sneaky that, uh, uh, we should just have our radar up on and also be cluing our family and friends into.
Megan: Yeah, so I think, I think first off, schemers are really, really, are deaths at bringing on a couple things.
One is, one is your fear. Mm-hmm. You don’t wanna get in trouble with police and you don’t wanna get [00:08:00] court system on and you don’t want, you don’t wanna be in trouble, so you’re just gonna do whatever because the, the sheriff one, what we call it. I think they’re also predatory on loaning people. So we kind of talked about, you know, I work with seniors and unfortunately seniors are quite well, and so mm-hmm.
It’s texting with seniors, we call them on the phone and they begin to open up. And so I think for our entrepreneurs though, specifically talk, entrepreneurs are often movers and shakers and they get things done. That’s why they’re successful. When they’re ready to take care of a problem, they’re ready to pay the bills, pay the invoice.
Oh. This invoice is outstanding. 60 days. Holy folks, let me pay it. Let me get it done. Mm-hmm. They are Ds ding as I like to say, getting stuff done and they moved too fast. Yeah. And they don’t stop to think, hold on, this doesn’t sound right. And people forget that they can just press the pause button and just say, hold on, like your friend did.[00:09:00]
Let we just call the sheriff’s office. And then you realize you just spent two hours hemming and hawing thinking you’re in trouble, but you’re not. And the sheriff real sheriff says, no, we didn’t call you at all. That’s scam. And so getting that prayer to the point of actually pausing for a second if thinking about what’s going on and maybe asking somebody to say like, Hey, can you check this out for a second?
Do we actually owe John Smith for $3,000 for renting tens two months ago? Did that really happen? But real world example include, you know, I was in an outreach with eight seniors. I was having lunch with them, but we start getting on talking about scam calls and every single one of them had received a call that their grandchild was in jail out of the United States, fill in the blanks, Mexico water MA or wherever, and they needed bail money immediately.[00:10:00]
Hysterically. One lady was like, well, thank God, you know, Sharon called me and I had to remind Sharon, she didn’t even have any grandkids, and it was like, oh, yeah, yeah, it is a scam. I don’t even have grandkids. Why are they calling me? So seniors are getting a little bit more adept and identifying some of these things, but the fact that like eight people at a lunch all got the same call.
I mean, it’s pervasive. Mm-hmm. So that’s one example we had. I’ve heard of somebody getting involved in a Bitcoin scheme where they’re taking their real dollars out of the bank account and they are acquiring Bitcoin, transferring that Bitcoin and the blockchain and all the information that comes with Bitcoin.
Not understanding that their real money bought real digital crypto, but that digital crypto is gone. Gone. And so is their money. Yeah. And you can’t go back in time And, um. Crypto is particularly [00:11:00] scary because there really isn’t much of a footprint that you can trace. And we’ve had, you know, people who’ve fallen scam to that, this Bitcoin ATMs and that that’s how me solve like plenty of this.
And so we hear scams all the time of such and such is happening. You need to go get Walmart gift cards. They go to Walmart and they buy a thousand dollars in gift cards and they say, well, I never signed the gift cards. You know what they did? They scratched off the back of the gift card and they scratched off the pin and they sent photos to the scammers.
Patrick: Mm-hmm. So those
Megan: gift cards were as good as gone.
Patrick: Yeah.
Megan: But there’s like kind of a disconnect that like, well I didn’t, I didn’t give them the money. I didn’t have you a thousand dollars. You did in this digital world. You did.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, that’s so [00:12:00] interesting because like the Walmart example is if you have a gift card, I know you can turn that into a money order at Walmart, and so it’s like I can turn that into cash pretty quickly.
I don’t have to go buy a bunch of, you know, groceries with that thousand dollars. I can, uh, take that and, and use it. And man, that’s so, so interesting. And I also think about the overseas. Bail issue because you hear about actually legitimate issues of people being in, let’s just say Mexico, and you know, they get arrested and they do need bail money and you know, whether it’s legitimate or not.
I mean, the reason they’re arrested could be basically a police scam, right? Like they’re just, uh, effectively holding these people hostage until they paid it to be set free. And so you’re sort of compounding a real. Scams on top of scams, right? Like, oh, I’m gonna make up this thing that could be real and impact you in a way.
And it’s like, you know, I think about my family members, shoot, I don’t keep track of ’em all. They could be in, [00:13:00] you know, south America for all I know. And if I got a call and it, you know, they needed the money, I could be like, oh geez, maybe they’re calling me. ’cause I understand I can, I’m good at solving problems and we can figure this out.
So, yeah, I, that one, that one, it’s just shocking to me how. Sophisticated in how they’re using, like you said, fear and compliance authority to get us to send money in a way that we’re never gonna get it back. So yeah, this is good. And we’ve talked about some phone calls as a way, and I think we need to protect against that.
I think cell phones maybe help out a little bit there. I hardly answer a phone number unless I am aware, but like for example. I answered, I saw the Clinton Police Department was calling me, so I answered it and I was fortunate that it was actually the Clinton Police Department and my. Daughter was like illegally parked and they couldn’t tow her car.
And so I like got in touch with my daughter. I’m like, move, I don’t care what you’re doing, go move your car. So I was happy I answered that call. Yeah. But, uh, you know, [00:14:00] when they show up on caller ID that way, it is challenging to know whether it’s real or not. But yeah. So we’ve talked about phone calls, but what other ways are people getting
Megan: Yeah, so email scams I think are common, right?
So, mm-hmm. There is email scams within organizations. I think it’s important for entrepreneurs to think about and to train their staffs, especially there if they have staff, do payroll that accounts payable. ’cause the scams. Say, Hey, we have, we have this invoice that we’ll be paid and click this life and we spent, how can being work for the account payable coordinator?
Right. Put in the credit card direction. It’s paid. So having control. Control. Right. With your staff. So one example of this is payroll receives an email and it says, um, employee Jo Smith, who’s a real employee at your organization. They wanna change their direct deposit. It’s true. That’s fine. Maybe if they’re chasing a, you know, a new account bonus and they’re opening it up, a new checking [00:15:00] account and direct deposit is supposed to be there.
There, and your payroll coordinator doesn’t think anything of it. And just. What’s in the new routing of probation account information starts sending paychecks to this new account and John Smith calls Darl was like, what’s going on? Got me in the month. What’s happening? Mm-hmm. Well, it’s in your new account.
And then John Smith says, I didn’t authorize my new account like this wasn’t me. And so this is a Porsche scan email that comes into the payroll department. They somehow have figured out a real employee’s name that tied to it. But one controller, one measure that a company can do is to say, okay, so if somebody’s put in a new direct deposit request or wants to change their payroll information, I’m gonna go down and talk to them person.
I’m gonna go down to John Smith’s office and I’m gonna ask him, Hey, is, is there any bank chase? Is this all correct? I’m gonna call John Smith on the phone. Verify. Right? So that’s half the battle in. This is just [00:16:00] stopping for a second. Putting the phone down, setting the email down, turning off the computer, and just go in live time to the real human being to talk to.
And so that’s certainly a, a very easy scan created over email. We talked a little bit, sorry, were you about to say something on that one?
Patrick: No, no. Well, I, I was just thinking about internally like we have. Investment accounts set up for clients. Mm-hmm. And I, I like all of the protocols that Schwab and the custodians we use have a, to make a change, we have to submit a document signed by the client.
And then we also have an internal, like, we have to have verbal confirmation from the client that they’re, they’re changing that information, you know, and so we, we generate that paperwork, we send it to their known email address, and then we have to talk to them to make sure that, you know. If their email didn’t get hacked and they’re changing it to, you know, some, some new bank account that, um, they don’t control.
So yes, I think all of those things are, [00:17:00] are, are great. But again, it’s so easy to, in the digital age, Hey, I got a new bank account. Here’s the routing and information. Please, please set it up.
Megan: Yeah.
Patrick: And it could be coming from the same email. Right. But the number of people that, uh, can get their email hacked, it’s, it’s easy.
Oh,
Megan: yeah, yeah. I, I had a coworker. I mean, he’s, he’s not even. 29 years old, he got an, he got an email that was like, Hey, you’re about to receive an UPS packaged. He, of course, didn’t think UPS package was coming, but he receives this email and he looked around the office and fax forth this staff. He’s like, Hey, so get a UPS package.
He similar, of course not it, that’s also his spa with the link and, and it’s as easy as V, right, because it looks, mm-hmm. Just like a normal EPS preparation on worship ship. Yeah, so one idea too, depending on, you know, maybe you don’t need this if you’re a small company, but there is, there are trainings out there, right?
To train your staff to go [00:18:00] through different videos and iterations
Patrick: mm-hmm.
Megan: To identify scans, to see like, hey, cover over the, because it doesn’t say it’s from UPS, it says it’s from Panther America. Having your staff train and to identify these things I think is half the battle. And so maybe an entrepreneur wants to look at investing a little bit of money into training their staff and going through modules and maybe that training company also sends some fake nails to see if people will, will bite on the fake people while blame for something like that.
So that might be one suggestion as well, is to just also train your own staff members to be aware of what these emails might look like.
Patrick: Yeah, I think about what the cost is to falling prey to some of this. It’s usually very expensive. I can think of scenarios where, you know, I’m just thinking of the floor for business owners might be 10 grand and then the ceiling is, you know,
Megan: sure.
Patrick: Could be a crazy high number. Mm-hmm. Right? And so I [00:19:00] think about the cost of doing that, and I think about the relatively low cost of engaging with somebody to do some training. I love the idea of. You engage with them and before you tell anybody, they sort of attack, you know, the organization, you know, we’re gonna send some emails, we’re gonna see what, how people respond to this.
We’re gonna make some phone calls and see where we can trip people up. Because the nice thing about doing that is like, oh, hey, this could have been really bad. Fortunately, this was somebody we paid to sort of test this out and see how we did. And we either did really well, like, congratulations everybody, or hey, here’s a few.
Areas we need to shore up because it’s a problem. So I love the training idea with the concept of, okay, let’s test the system and see how we’re gonna do and we’ll go from there. And then one other thing you brought up, I think of where all of this maybe started was I think about, you know, those emails we all used to get from like the Nigerian princes on like, Hey, I need to.
[00:20:00] Transfer you some money and then you’ll transfer it back and you know, all of these. And they were just so poorly written. And I just think about the sophistication, right? Like those worked ’cause we all got ’em. And a tiny percentage of people like responded to it ’cause they didn’t know any better thinking it was legit.
And so, I dunno, I think of where we started and where we’re at now. You know, I’m just thinking about next iterations with AI and the ability to, you know. I used some software to spoof my own voice and create a podcast episode. And I’m like, there’s nothing stopping somebody from, you know, Joe Rogan has, you know, he’s out there everywhere.
Mm-hmm. And he’s like, if I wouldn’t have known that wasn’t me, I would’ve assumed that was me. You know? Um, and this is the guy that you know, uh, whose voice they were using. So I’m concerned that the sophistication’s going to keep ramping up and we just have to be. Vigilant on, like making sure that we’re not falling prey to these things.
So, uh, this is great. Is there any [00:21:00] other examples that we should be talking about that we, we haven’t touched on yet?
Megan: I mean, there’s, you know, this is not necessarily for the entrepreneur, but journal family members of like if you, that a senior who lives alone and is online all the time and there’s Facebook scams.
Often. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you can glom so much from Facebook about a person that, you know, you don’t even have to be in a debt scammer, but you could start a conversation and go, well, it looks like you’re on trip to Florida with your grandkids. Mm-hmm. You know so much about you. And it’s very, very easy to tap into that loneliness, to tap into that senior, and they think it’s a friendship that’s budding or they think it’s a relationship.
Right. So people are, all the time people think like what? Boyfriend in Germany, I had to send him $600 a month because he’s saving up enough money buying a plane ticket mm-hmm. In the house in Germany. Yeah. I’m, I’m gonna [00:22:00] go there next. And you just, your heart breaks.
Patrick: Yeah.
Megan: Because they think it’s completely real.
They think that that person on the other line of the Facebook messenger is, is completely a real person. And then the hard questions come out. Well, have you even talked to them on the phone? No. Met ’em in person. No. You ever, you know where they live, like, you know their eyebrows. Did you work up the address?
Did you mm-hmm. Just like you pressing the pause button and just like defying a little bit of logic, but go the long way. And so I think thinking about what do our, our digital ads look like? What does our Facebook account Instagram look like? Is it public? Go find our informational. It’s that easy to do, unfortunately, especially to seniors and, and you can half into seniors who just do every single month from instance.
And so that’s one. You know, there’s other [00:23:00] predatory stuff too that we gotta think about. So like solar panel scans right now, there’s like door, door-to-door salespeople who are selling, you know, high five digit solar panels to seniors. To other people and they’re maybe getting like 20 bucks back as a discount on their electric bill.
I mean, Hmm. Know many $20 monthly rebates you need to, to pick up eight brands in the
Patrick: Yeah. Pay. Yeah. No, I think that’s good. And I, I’ve even seen some young people that, um, uh, we’re I’ll say, offered some job opportunities, right? Like, oh, hey, here’s an opportunity you just need to send us. You know, so many dollars and we’ll send you the like, welcome packet.
And it’s like, no, no it’s not.
Megan: Yeah. And never send that. Yeah. There’s, there’s another kind of common one, like a lottery standard. So like you, you won the lottery that in Canada, even though you never been to Canada and never [00:24:00] played the lottery there, but somehow you won that Canadian lottery. Um, but you have to send us $200 mm-hmm.
For the taxes on money. But then the $200 wasn’t enough. Now you have to send 500 more dollars. ’cause there’s this other thing that happens, and in your mind you just think, I’m getting a million bucks, so what’s 700 bucks? What’s a thousand bucks? Right? What’s another 10,000 bucks? Because I’m about to get a million.
And people get so tunnel vision on the payoff, on the reward center of their brain that they’re willing to continue to write checks. We were literally just writing a check anywhere. And so yeah, the lottery scams are, are still pervasive. Yeah.
Patrick: Yeah, yeah. No, this is great. So I think you’ve given us some really good ideas on how to prevent some of this.
Mm-hmm. But maybe we just slow down for a second and just walk through a little bit of that. I think one of the key things I, I’ve heard you say is like, let’s just slow down. [00:25:00] Like we’re not in a rush. We don’t need to send the money right this second, let’s. We can probably spend less than five minutes verifying that we should do this, right?
Yeah. We can make a phone call, we can check with a partner. We can do that. We can slow down. So what else is, uh, I’ve heard you say a few other things, but what else is on the list of things that we should do to really protect ourselves from all these different opportunities?
Megan: Yeah, I think so. Some of the slowing down and the verification.
So I had the same situation happened. I was on a girl’s trip, one of my friends gets called from the sheriff’s office, same number from the sheriff’s office, shows up in the sheriff’s office. And I’m like laughing and she’s like super worried. And I’m like, no, this is, mm-hmm. Like let me show you how this works.
Hang up the phone or got the voicemail. And of course it was like, do this thing, write mark. And I’m like, yeah, we’re not gonna call that number back, but we’re gonna Google the number of the sheriff department. We’re just fine. And sure enough the sheriff department was like, here’s up third call to note.
There’s a scam out there. [00:26:00] Right. So it’s the pausing and it’s the bureau. Yeah. Um, I think also making sure, you know, if you’re advanced director spark order right? You have power of attorney page, it, making sure that’s on file bank or any comments or any, um, ations to the bank might be helpful to say. And yeah, Mike Son’s my power of attorney agent.
His name is, so who was of this address And I authorized him to, you know, they out $200 a month for what? You know, ’cause ’cause I like to whatever. Mm-hmm. Go, go shopping. And so the bank already knows like, oh yeah. Know. Mm-hmm. Mrs. Smith told me like, yeah, he comes in once a month this day, got to work. Banks generally have like some pre firm regulations right around mm-hmm.
Protecting their clients and they wanna protect the client money, right? Yeah. They wanted to stay in the client [00:27:00] bank account. Um, so, so just some general good housekeeping about power attorney documents, um, if you have those, um, communicating with your bank, if there are certain, you know, like maybe your company never needs to use a wire mm-hmm.
For any reason. So maybe communicating your bank that like take that option. If anybody calls you from my company and wants to wire money, stop that immediately. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So doing some proactive things with your bank and financial with Alex’s help. I think digital things like multi-factor authentication is helpful.
Using things also in, in your own, maybe your personal cell phone, just like password papers, things like that. Not to say we get hacked on our cell phones a lot. But things come up on our cell phones and we get, you know, text sending. Mm-hmm. We get emails that we can so easily click Apple Pay done. [00:28:00]
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Megan: Yep. And just to stop yourself if the multi-factor authentication is just a way to slow you down for a second, maybe setting that up. Right. So that’s things that I’m thinking of off the top of my head to protect yourself, but like also educating people too, like, you know. Social security is really never gonna call you.
Mm-hmm. As is the IRS. The IRS is gonna hunt you down, but they’re gonna send you mail, they’re never gonna call you. Right? Mm-hmm. You’re never gonna like go to jail for your tax bill tomorrow. You might go to the jail, but it’s gonna be through a law court process and you’re gonna be in court and there’s gonna be a judge who says things.
Patrick: Yeah.
Megan: But be acting on that immediacy. Mm-hmm. If somehow we can train ourselves. Again, press pause and say, that’s weird that the IRS is calling and realizing some of these things and, and just sharing that with luck. Ones, business partners, et cetera, [00:29:00] be like, Hey, John, you told me that social security called you because you’re not paying your flight attack like that.
That didn’t sound right. And so using your network, right, using trusted business partners. Calling you Pat to say, Hey, does this sound weird to you?
Patrick: You know, in today’s episode we’ve been talking about protecting what you’ve worked so hard to build, and while scams and fraud can take your money in an instant, there’s another place Many entrepreneurs lose money every single year.
Taxes. Most business owners overpay, not because they want to, but because they don’t have a proactive tax strategy in place. That’s exactly why I created vital strategies.com/tax to help entrepreneurs like you keep more of what you earn legally and strategically when you visit, you’ll get the tools, ideas, and guidance you need to start building a plan that works year round to protect your wealth and maximize your results.
So after you finish this episode, head of vinyl [00:30:00] strategies.com/tax, take the first step towards making your business res, not just against scams, but also against unnecessary taxes too.
Okay, Megan, we’ve talked through a number of strategies. Is there anything else you can think of before we sort of move on to the next topic?
Megan: Yeah. We talked a little bit about, you know, strategies kind of in your personal life, but this also for entrepreneurs is something to think about. Is. What information do you share on your website, right?
Mm-hmm. You share the CFO’s email address and the president’s email address, or do you give just a front facing email address, but their internal email address is different and you know, what information do you share in the biographies after president and your CCFO of the company, et cetera? Because sure, there, there has to be, you know, some front facing information to, to the greater public, but.
It also can be quite predatory, right? So the more information a scammer can glean, the more credible they sound when they’re gonna [00:31:00] call your accounts payable to say, Hey, president Heney said that this was okay. You know, here’s your email address. Be weirdly, know so much about your company, what they’ve cleaned it all from your website.
And so kind of thinking about again, what do you wanna share online? How can you kind of be protective on the information that you share? The world wide web is open for everybody.
Patrick: Yeah, it is. And I think those are, are fantastic. And I think one thing that you’re highlighting here on, on these is it’s almost good to have a little friction in the process.
You know, I, I think about your example with the wires, right? Like, if I can just call my bank and they wire money, that’s different than having a protocol where I have to go into the bank and sign for the wire personally, right? And so you can put those things in place and we. A few weeks ago we had a conversation with a cybersecurity expert and he said, you know, the interesting thing about cybersecurity is you can put all of these protections in place, but if the, if there’s a weak spot [00:32:00] and the weak spot’s with the owner, ’cause we like to do things fast and easy and so forget having multifactor authentication ’cause it takes too long.
He was like, you hold the keys to the castle and you’re just leaving them on your desk for somebody to come take. And so put those things in place so. If people decide to act like you, there’s some friction in the process where it will get slowed down because you’ll be like, wait a minute, I’m not logging into whatever.
And like for example, my bank notifies me via text message when things are happening, you know, like automatic payments and that type of thing. And it’s kind of nice to just go, oh, okay, yep. That’s the thing. I’m used to going out. But if it’s a thing that’s not used to going out, at least I have some time to get it unwound, you know, before it ends up with the wrong person.
So. I think a little bit of friction in those, those processes is actually good, even though it can be frustrating in the moment that, you know, it’s gonna take me a minute longer to get something done, but at the end of the day, it’s
Megan: well worth it. Uh,
Patrick: it’s good. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, they
Megan: couldn’t agree more.
[00:33:00] And that’s, it’s gonna be one of those things too, from the owner, from the friend all the way down and don’t, and we even shouldn’t hand a call about it and just say like, Hey, this is a thing we, yeah. Is it frustrating? That will be a little bit, but this is an order of perfection that’s now. Pre that buying with the rest of the company.
Yeah. Your account field department might not be able to work as quickly, but it will work. Yeah,
Patrick: yeah. Yeah. And I think there’s also, we haven’t really talked about this, but you know, the, unfortunately the number of examples I’ve seen from somebody internally in the business taking advantage of some, some freedom to move money around is also there.
So I think as we’re talking about controls, just having, you know, like I’ve seen people have a stamp for checks and I’m like. Anybody that has that stamp can now sign checks on the owner’s behalf. Like burn that. Like get rid of that. You actually sign all the checks, pay attention to what you’re signing, make sure that, you know, things are happening.
And I don’t know, I think there’s [00:34:00] also just a good level, like a lot of our clients are just so in their financial details. Like that’s just good practice. ’cause if something looks off like, Hey, what? What’s happening over here? The times we’ve seen it, abuse start to happen is the owner’s sort of busy.
There’s lots of money flowing through the business, and people just figure, I’m just gonna like, just gonna skim a few off here. You know, I, I deserve it. Or I’m just, I just need a short term loan, I’ll pay it back. And then they’re like, that worked. And then all of a sudden the problem snowballs and it’s, it’s a massive issue.
So, uh,
Megan: yeah. And it’s, I think, you know, it’s hard right? To sometimes invest in sim of these really strong measures of like. Room outside company to do an audit twice a year, four times a year. Open up your books. Let somebody else who’s outside the company take a look and just poke around to see what’s going on.
Right. Get you, uh, feedback about what’s going on. Is there any weird stuff going on? And see [00:35:00] little and let them, let them take a look and do their jobs, right? And I think that’s so what, so great financial hygiene right to put into place. That can be really hard though, because that’s quite cost. But thinking about measures that you’re gonna do quarterly, bi-annually, something like that, where somebody’s taking a look at your financials, that’s not the people who are involved in creating a wedding.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that’s, uh, fantastic. Megan, this has been wonderful. I think the wonderful, in a sad kind of way, I’m so glad that we’re having this conversation because it, I think it needs to be brought out there. The level of sophistication is going up. There’s financial incentive out there to, um, go be a bad actor.
’cause if you, you know, it, it can unfortunately pay nicely. And so I think having these, these safeguards in place that we’ve discussed are critical. I just think of, you know, [00:36:00] again, slow down, create some friction in the process, put some safeguards in place. You know, get a second set of eyes on anything that smells off, right?
Like, if this seems weird, just go talk to somebody. It’s okay. And then I, I love the quarterly sort of training and testing and just audit to see what’s happening with your organization. I think that that could be good from cybersecurity all the way through the old school, like. Phone call, you know, Nigerian email scam.
Like, just make sure nobody’s falling prey to those things. ’cause that’s, there’s just too much money on the line. Right. I feel like we, whether we’re in our business or our personal lives, we work too hard to have somebody come along and unjustly take our money. Right. And, uh, you know, we, we think of the impact that could have.
I was talking to one of our clients and they were talking about a law firm that they worked with that went through an embezzlement and had to shut its doors. I’m just like. It’s just an example. Like, you could lose your business if these things, you know, get outta hand. And business is hard enough the way it is, let alone giving your money to somebody that shouldn’t have it.
So [00:37:00] then I think about what the opposite side of that looks like, right? If we’re proactive, uh, we spend a little time and energy, we’ve built a profitable business and it’s protected and it’s resilient even against, you know, some of the more sophisticated attacks. So I think, yeah, this has been great.
Megan: Yeah.
Any,
Patrick: any final comments?
Megan: Yeah. Last thing I wanna mention too, so, so we talk about being proactive. We talk about currently safeguard talk. The really, really unfortunate reason why, because law enforcement unfortunately is mm-hmm. Almost next to never getting your money back for you. Yep. Once that wire happens, once the Bitcoin transfer happens, it’s as good as lighting your wallet on fire.
It is gone. Mm-hmm. The money is gone. Gone. You’re never gonna give it back that, you know what, this is so hearsay saying, but I had heard once that the FBI isn’t even gonna start to investigate. Unless it’s over 500,000.
Patrick: Yeah.
Megan: Which is, I mean, a monstrous sum of money, but clearly their clients are [00:38:00] happening so often that they’re putting a level on it before they even investigate.
Yeah. Which is so telling about this, you know? Yes. You should still report it to s you should report it to your bank. Um, you should make a police report so you have memorialized what happened. As you kinda mentioned from the top, there’s been things with Shane where on that. Mm-hmm. But it also, yeah, maybe it does save somebody in the future.
Maybe it’s an important lesson for the bank as well, but ultimately the safeguards are your best measure to keep your money because law enforcement’s not gonna, unfortunately.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s such an important point to all this. It’s like, you know, we, we can get scammed and we think, like if somebody walked into my, you know, house and.
Took the money and I had their phone number. Like I would just, you know, and I knew who they were and had them on camera. We, you know, we, you’d go solve that problem. But unfortunately, the person on the other end of this is anonymous and they’re almost [00:39:00] impossible to trace. And so, yeah, that is, that is great.
The, the likelihood of recovery is so low, you know, an ounce of prevention’s worth a pound of cure. It just, it’s so much, so much hassle to try to get any of these dollars back. It’s just not happening. So we need to be proactive on the front end. Megan, this has been wonderful. I appreciate all of your time and insight.
I also just wanna highlight you are. One of my favorite people is you’re just, you’re just an amazing human being. So I appreciate that so much. I appreciate you spending your time and your expertise here on this episode today. So thank you.
Megan: Oh, pat, thank you so much. It’s a privilege to be here.
Patrick: That’s it for today’s episode.
Thank you so much for tuning into the Vital Wealth Strategist podcast. I hope you found real value in this conversation with Megan. And that it’s given you both the awareness and the tools to protect yourself, your business, and the people you care about. If you know someone who could benefit from this information, please share this episode with them.
It might just save them from making an expensive mistake. And before we wrap, if you’re ready to take the next steps in [00:40:00] protecting and growing your wealth, go to vital strategies.com/tax. It’s where you can start building a strategy designed to help you minimize your taxes, keep more of what you earn, and position your business for long-term success.
And remember, you’re a vital entrepreneur. You’re vital because you’re the backbone of our economy, creating opportunities, driving growth, and making an impact. You’re vital to your family, creating abundance in every aspect of life, and you’re vital to me. ’cause you’re committed to growing your wealth, leading with purpose, and creating something truly great.
Thank you for being a part of this incredible community of vital entrepreneurs. I appreciate you and I look forward to having you back here next time on the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast where we help entrepreneurs minimize their taxes, master wealth, and optimize their lives.