Brandy Derrick

Gift cards seem simple, right? A customer buys one. You get the cash now. They come back later and redeem it. Easy. Until it is not. A recent Michigan case shows just how sophisticated gift card fraud has become. According to the Michigan Attorney General, the scheme allegedly involved stealing unsold gift cards, tampering with … Read more

Most small business owners think fraud happens somewhere else. To bigger companies. Sloppier companies. Companies with weak systems. But let’s be honest. That kind of thinking is exactly what leaves the door wide open. According to a March 19, 2026 Malwarebytes article, cybercriminals are buying stolen tax forms and personally identifiable information on dark web … Read more

If you own a small business, you probably do not spend your mornings reading executive orders from the White House. You are busy running payroll, dealing with customers, fixing problems, and trying to keep cash coming in. So when the federal government announces a major push against cybercrime, fraud, and foreign scam centers, it is … Read more

Every business owner wants to believe that once they send an invoice, payment is just a matter of time. But that is not always how it works. Sometimes the client is slow to pay. Sometimes the invoice gets buried. And sometimes, the real nightmare happens: your client gets tricked into sending payment to a cybercriminal … Read more

When Tax Fraud Looks Like “Business as Usual” Most business owners think fraud will be obvious. They picture forged signatures, missing cash, fake vendors, or someone living way beyond their salary. But tax fraud often looks a lot less dramatic than that. Sometimes it looks like a return you did not really review.Sometimes it looks … Read more

A lot of scammers do not look shady anymore. That is part of the problem. They look polished. They have decent branding. Their social media pages look active. Sometimes they even have fake reviews, fake comments, and fake customer photos. If you are a customer scrolling quickly, it can be hard to tell who is … Read more

Let’s talk about the kind of fraud that doesn’t come from some hacker halfway across the world… but from someone sitting inside the business. Because that’s exactly what happened here. A woman in Nevada was sentenced to 12 years in prison after embezzling $1.4 million. Not $1,400. Not $14,000. Over a million dollars. And cases … Read more

Let’s say you’re on a webinar. The presenter is smooth. The content feels tailored. The chat is active. People are asking great questions: It feels engaging. Legitimate. Even reassuring. But here’s the question you need to start asking: What if those people aren’t real? Yes, AI Is Now Part of the Sales Machine This is … Read more

When most people think about credit card fraud, they picture a stolen wallet. Someone grabs your card, buys a TV, and you get an alert from your bank. That does happen. But it is not the biggest threat anymore. The bigger threat is something far quieter. According to recent data, about 90% of credit card … Read more

Let’s play detective for a minute. You write a check to a vendor.You drop it in the mail.You assume it arrives. Case closed, right? Not always. Recently a former postal worker was sentenced to prison for helping run a multi million dollar bank fraud scheme. The crime involved stealing checks from the mail, altering them, … Read more