Brandy Derrick

A personal assistant in New York recently admitted to stealing nearly $10 million from an elderly couple who trusted her with access to their finances. According to federal prosecutors, Catalina Corona worked for the couple for years and used that position of trust to deposit hundreds of checks made payable to herself or to cash, … Read more

A fraud accusation can shut down a business long before anyone proves a thing. That is the hard lesson from the My Forex Funds case involving Vaughan CEO Murtuza Kazmi and Traders Global Group. According to reporting and court-related summaries, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission brought a major enforcement action against the company, froze … Read more

Fraud rarely kicks down the front door. Most of the time, it walks in politely. It sounds professional. It knows just enough details to feel credible. It creates urgency. It asks for one small thing, then another, then another. And before anyone realizes what happened, the money is gone. A recent report from Maeil Business … Read more

Fraud does not always kick down the front door. Sometimes it shows up as a normal-looking email. Sometimes it hides inside a vendor payment request. Sometimes it is a check that was “lost in the mail,” only to be altered and cashed by someone else. And sometimes, the biggest clue is the one nobody noticed … Read more

For a long time, one-time passcodes felt like a smart upgrade. Password plus a code texted to your phone? That sounded secure. Better than just a password, right? But here’s the problem: fraud has changed. Today’s criminals are not sitting around trying to guess six-digit codes. They are calling, texting, spoofing, and phishing people into … Read more

Fraud usually does not show up waving a red flag. It shows up looking normal. It might be an email from a vendor. A request to change bank information. A payment that seems urgent. A message that looks close enough to real that no one stops to question it. That is how businesses get caught. … Read more

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