Security Center

1. Hire The Right Employees. Prevention is always better than a cure. Be sure to screen potential employees thoroughly, checking past employment, personal and professional references, and criminal records. This is especially important if the person will handle cash or inventory. You may even consider hiring a graphologist to determine if the potential employee is trustworthy and able to work in your environment.

2. Educate your employees. You and your employees are the first line of defense against corporate account takeover. A strong security program paired with employee education about the warning signs, safe practices, and responses to a suspected takeover is essential to protecting your company and customers.

3. Separate Accounting Duties. Many small businesses depend on one person to open mail, process payments, make bank deposits, pay invoices, handle petty cash and reconcile bank statements. This unrestricted access makes a business vulnerable. It's a good idea to divide accounting responsibilities so that no single individual controls all of the financial activity.

   If your business doesn't have sufficient personnel to separate duties, you can try rotating financial responsibilities every few months. In any case, make it a priority to understand and verify your business's financial information actively.

4. Have Bank Statements Mailed To Your Home Or A Post Office Box. Review bank statements before your bookkeeper does. Be on the lookout for missing checks, checks that are out of order, checks written to suppliers or people you don't know, and checks made out to a third party but endorsed by someone in your company.

5. Protect your online environment. It is essential to protect your cyber environment just as you would your cash and physical location. Do not use unprotected internet connections. Encrypt sensitive data and keep updated virus protections on your computer. Use complex passwords and change them periodically.

6. Arrange For Surprise Audits. Catching an employee off-guard can be your best defense in discovering fraud. Make it a regular practice to bring in a CPA once a year, at different times, to conduct a surprise audit of your company's financial records. Audits make it difficult for a dishonest employee to cover up his or her actions. In addition to uncovering fraud, the company's knowledge of surprise audits can act as a deterrent.

7. Utilize our Fraud Prevention tools to prevent unauthorized transactions. Talk to your Resource banker about programs that safeguard you from unauthorized transactions. Positive Pay and other services offer callbacks, device authentication, multi-person approval processes, and batch limits to protect you from fraud.

8. Create an Ethical Work Environment and a No-Tolerance Culture. Set appropriate ethical examples for employees to follow and treat workers fairly and with respect. But don't be too trusting; keep in mind that personal financial pressures can push even the most trusted employees to conduct fraud.

   Through employee orientation, training, and other communications, make every employee aware of what activities constitute fraud, what the consequences are, and what steps the business takes to detect fraud.

   You should also let employees know what to do if they suspect fraud. Because most employees are reluctant to report suspicious activity, a third-party hotline can offer a level of anonymity that makes employees more willing to come forward.

9. Insist That All Employees Take Allotted Vacation Time. Research has shown that employees who commit fraud sometimes resist taking a vacation because they must remain on the job to cover up their fraudulent activity. For some employees, just knowing they must take a vacation every year is enough of a deterrent.

10. Don't Limit Your Focus To Financial Fraud. Theft of confidential information and trade secrets can be just as damaging to your business as embezzling funds. Enforce strict procedures for access to sensitive data. Buy a paper shredder and use it to destroy all confidential documents.

Fraudsters use phishing, imposter scams, and fake lottery scams to digitally befriend or intimidate you and convince you to share confidential information. They steal your personal information such as your name, social security number, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, or other personal information. They then use that information to pose as YOU and make fraudulent purchases, money transfers, and more at YOUR expense.

Never give your debit card, credit card, or account information over the phone. Always use extreme caution when discussing financial and personal information. Remember, Resource Bank will never ask you to disclose confidential information via an unsecured email.

Suppose you have disclosed sensitive information in a phishing attack. In that case, you should also contact one of the three major credit bureaus and discuss whether you need to place a fraud alert on your credit file, which will help prevent thieves from opening a new account in your name. Here is the contact information for each bureau's fraud division:

Equifax
800-525-6285
P.O. Box 740250
Atlanta , GA 30374

Experian
888-397-3742
P.O. Box 1017
Allen, TX 75013

TransUnion
800-680-7289
P.O. Box 6790
Fullerton, CA 92634

Contact all of your financial institutions immediately and alert them to the situation. Resource Bank is here to help and will swiftly place alerts on your accounts and cancel your debit card to protect against fraudulent charges.

IdentityTheft.gov is the federal government’s one-stop resource for identity theft victims. The site provides streamlined checklists and sample letters to guide you through the recovery process. Visit IdentityTheft.gov  or by calling 1-877-IDTHEFT.

A cashier’s check is a check issued by a bank and payable to a specific person. Because a bank itself issues a cashier’s check, the cashier’s check is paid by funds of the bank and not the depositor. Therefore, if an item is genuine, there is very little risk that the instrument will be returned.

Sometimes, however, a cashier’s check is not genuine. If you unknowingly accept a fraudulent cashier’s check in exchange for goods or services, you will likely be the one who suffers the financial loss.

It can be challenging for either you or your bank to tell. When you deposit a check into your account, your bank generally is required by law to make the funds available within a specific period of time (usually, one business day for a cashier’s check or other official instruments). This is true even if the check has not yet cleared through the banking system. Therefore, even if the funds have been made available in your account, you cannot be sure that the check has cleared or is “good.”

Your bank also may not be able to determine that the check is fraudulent when you deposit it. Instead, your bank may learn of the problem only when the check is returned unpaid by the other bank – which may take a couple of weeks or more. Scammers try to make the item look genuine, which will delay the discovery of the fraud. Once the item has been returned unpaid, your bank will generally be able to reverse the deposit to your account and collect the amount of the deposit from you.

Know the people with whom you do business. When possible, verify information about the buyer from an independent third party. Be cautious about accepting checks – even a cashier’s check – from people that you do not know, especially since it may be challenging to pursue a remedy if the transaction goes wrong.

• When you use the Internet to sell goods or services, consider other options such as escrow services or online payment systems rather than payment by a cashier’s check.

• If you accept a cashier’s check for payment, never take a check for more than your selling price if you are expected to pay the excess to someone else. Ask yourself why the buyer would be willing to trust you, who may be a perfect stranger, with funds that properly belong to a third party.

• A cashier’s check is less risky than other types of checks only if the item is genuine. If you can, ask for a cashier’s check drawn on a bank with a branch in your area.

• If you want to find out whether a check is genuine, call or visit the bank on which the check is written. That bank will be in a better position to tell you whether the check was properly issued.

• Know the difference between funds being available for withdrawal from your account and a check that has cleared. Your bank may be required by law to make funds available to you even if the check has not yet cleared. Keep in mind that it could take several weeks to know if the check will clear or not.

Each scam involving a fraudulent cashier's check may be different, but some of the more common scenarios are:

• Selling goods. You sell goods in the marketplace – for example, over the Internet. A buyer sends you a cashier's check for the price you have agreed on, and you ship the goods to the buyer. The cashier's check turns out to be fraudulent.  

• Excess of the purchase price. This scenario is similar to the one described above. The buyer sends you a cashier's check for more than the purchase price and asks you to wire some or all of the excess to a third party, often in a foreign country. The buyer may explain that this procedure allows the buyer to satisfy its obligations to you and the third party with a single check. The cashier's check turns out to be fraudulent.

•  Unexpected windfall. You receive a letter informing you that you have the right to receive a substantial sum of money. For example, the letter may state that you have won a foreign lottery or are the beneficiary of someone's estate. The letter will say that you have to pay a processing/transfer tax or fee before receiving the money, but a cashier's check will be enclosed to cover that fee. The letter will ask you to deposit the cashier's check into your account and wire the fee to a third party, often in a foreign country. The cashier's check turns out to be fraudulent.

• Mystery shopping. You receive a letter informing you that you have been chosen to act as a mystery shopper. The letter includes a cashier's check, and you are told to deposit the check into your account. You are told to use a portion of the funds to purchase merchandise at designated stores, transfer a portion of the funds to a third party using a designated wire service company, and keep the remainder. The cashier's check turns out to be fraudulent.

Scams also may involve other types of checks. For example, the fraudulent check may appear to be written on a real person or company's bank account or be written on an account that contains insufficient funds to cover the check. Other scams involve fraudulent postal service money orders or fraudulent money orders that appear to have been issued by a bank.

If you find yourself in a fraudulent situation, you ordinarily would have a remedy against the person who wrote the check. Unfortunately, it can be common to have great difficulty pursuing any remedy against these scammers, primarily if they reside in a foreign country or have disguised their identities.

The result of most scams is that the fraudulent check will be returned unpaid. The bank will then deduct the amount of the check from your account or otherwise seek repayment from you, and you will lose either the goods that you sold, the money that you sent to the third party, or both.

Anytime a scam involves a cashier’s check, official check, or money order from a bank, and you believe that it could be counterfeit, you should contact the issuing bank directly to report receipt of the check and to verify authenticity. When contacting the bank, do not use the telephone number provided on the instrument, as this number is probably not associated with the bank but rather with the scam artist.

To locate a bank’s mailing address, you can check the FDIC’s BankFind Suite.