Small business scams

Capri

Just a heads up on 2 US scams -
1) jamming the credit card terminal transmission aerial, and
2) phoning to say that electricity ( or bins / phones.....) payment hasn't been recieved and you will be cut off unless you give the caller your credit card details immediately - be aware !

A recent missive from the FBI demonstrates that Main Street shops can also face cruder threats, with fraudsters using aluminum wrap to block merchants’ credit card satellite antennae, abetting purchases with phony cards.

Here’s a scheme that’s even more low-tech. Crooks in Portland, Ore., have been calling small business owners pretending to be from an electric company, according to a local TV outlet. Due to a recent hacking attack against the utility, the flimflam goes, monthly bill payments were never processed. Scammers tell merchants that if they don’t pay past due bills immediately, they could lose power—a threat that probably sounded especially fearsome during the holiday shopping season.

The swindle hasn’t been confined to Portland. In November, the FBI’s Seattle office warned small business owners against a similar scam, noting that the ruse had also been reported in New York and Maryland. (Minority business owners may have been singled out, according to the FBI, and fraudsters often asked merchants to settle up with prepaid Green Dot debit cards.) Missouri’s attorney general and Wisconsin’s Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection have also warned that utility scams are on the rise. The list of states goes on

biko

Ok, I'll make a note of that when they ring from US.

Specialun

Those wisconsin guys are well clued up

Nowt gets past them