Fraud Wise

In this month’s episode of Fraud Wise, we’re taking a deeper dive into cybersecurity and sharing information on how you can avoid falling victim to spam, phishing and different types of malware, including ransomware. Ransomware has been on the rise, and agricultural companies in particular have been a target. Tune in to learn how to identify these types of fraud, tips what to look out for and what...

CoBank’s Check and ACH Debit Positive Pay is a great way to monitor payments, helping protect against altered and counterfeit checks. We’ll also discuss the importance of auto pay settings, the difference between commercial and consumer accounts, the review process and more.

Social engineering is essentially a con game where a criminal tries to trick a victim into doing something, or sharing private information that the criminal can then use to their advantage. This can happen in person, on the phone or via email. Tune in to learn how to identify these types of cyberattacks and how to avoid becoming a victim of fraud.

We know that fraud is becoming more and more prolific so we’ve dedicated this last episode in 2021 to provide you the resources and best practices to find and report fraud. Taking quick and effective action is the best way to resolve an immediate fraud issue and help prevent fraud from continuing. 

While businesses don’t want to think they could have issues, the reality is that no company is 100% safe from internal fraud. It is important for companies to be aware of potential threats and take the necessary steps to help protect themselves. This month’s episode of Fraud Wise discusses the indicators to look out for in detecting internal fraud.

Robocalls and robotexts are leading to $10 billion a year in fraud. If you answer the phone and hear a recorded message instead of a live person, it’s a robocall. If you’re getting a lot of robocalls trying to sell you something, odds are the calls are illegal and, most likely, a scam. Learn the tips on how to handle roboscams and how to reduce the volume of these types of calls. 

Malware, malicious software that installed on a victim’s computer without their knowledge, can take several forms including ransomware and crimeware, session hijacking, and key logging. Learn the different ways to identify these types of cyberattacks and how to avoid being a victim.

In this month’s episode of Fraud Wise, learn some tips and tricks that can be critical in preventing fraud. Fraud has been on the rise and it was so prevalent in 2020 that it’s more important than ever to place a spotlight on prevention. The Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network database received more than 4.7 million fraud reports last year from an array of entities—from the BBB an...

2020 was a peak year for fraud. The Federal Trade Commission recently reported they received more than 2.1 million fraud reports from consumers in 2020. The consequence was a reported $3.3 billion during the year, an astronomical increase from just $1.8 billion in 2019. Learn how to protect yourself against the consequences of fraud.

Social engineering scams, or con games in which a criminal tricks a victim into sharing information or taking an action, are widespread and take advantage of unaware businesses or individuals. Falling for these scams can expose you or your business to significant financial and business risk. Learn how to protect against these scams.

More emails are being sent every day than ever before. And, unfortunately, more and more of the emails we receive might be socially-engineered attempts to commit fraud. Fraudsters can use several tricks to commit email fraud including spoofing, hacking, and masking. Learn how to detect and protect yourself against these scams.

These days, everyone is especially vulnerable when it comes to consumer fraud. In particular, over the past year during COVID-19, new types of scams have surfaced—from pandemic-related fraud to consumer and social engineering scams, which are on the rise.

Most people are aware of the danger of having a check—or blank check stock—stolen and how this can lead to altered check fraud. However, perpetrators of check fraud have another tool in their arsenal of deceit -- creating counterfeit checks using their own paper, but with your legitimate account and bank routing numbers. In this month’s episode of CoBank’s Fraud Wise, the monthly audio program foc...

With so much focus on cyber security and internet hacking, it’s easy to forget that there are some old school frauds still being perpetrated today. One of these cons is check fraud, and both individuals and companies are at risk. In this month’s episode of CoBank’s Fraud Wise, the monthly audio program focusing on the fraud and security risks faced by organizations and individuals, learn how to pr...

On an annual basis, the FBI receives at least 467,000 cybercrime complaints, causing as much as $3.6 billion in losses. In many of these cases, the fraudster posed as a contracted vendor and sent an email, letter or phone call asking for payments to be made to a new bank account. Don’t be the next victim of a cybercrime attack. In this month’s episode of CoBank’s Fraud Wise, the monthly audio prog...

In previous episodes of Fraud Wise, we talked about the types of fraud risks you may face, how you can prevent them, and how you can mitigate the financial and business repercussions in general terms. In this episode, we’ll talk about what to do immediately following a fraud incident, and in the days that follow.

Most people are aware of the danger of having a check—or blank check stock—stolen and how this can lead to altered check fraud. But fraudsters can also create counterfeit checks using their own paper, but with your account and bank routing numbers.  All they need is the numbers – and then they can commit any number of scams.

Social engineering scams are widespread and varied, and can take advantage of the unaware business or individual. In this episode, we’re talking about a form of social engineering called company impersonation scams.

In this episode of Fraud Wise, we’re talking about some warning signs that malware has been installed on your computer to compromise your data and account information—and more.

In this episode of Fraud Wise, we’re talking about three ways you can protect your payments from fraud.

In this special edition of CoBank’s Fraud Wise, we’ll be talking about a large-scale impersonation scam involving a specific type of loan related to the Small Business Administration's COVID-19 pandemic relief. Although CoBank is not involved in any way, we encourage all of our customers to review the program and assess whether they are at risk.

Any time we mail a paper check, there's a risk of it being stolen. What's the downside of a stolen check? The thief can alter the check to gain access to your money, and change the amount to something much higher, even so far as to clean out your bank account. In this episode of Fraud Wise we’re talking about ways to protect yourself from altered check fraud.

For most employees, when the CEO or CFO asks you to do something, you jump right to it. Unfortunately, that may not always be the best move when it comes to financial transactions. In this episode of Fraud Wise we’re talking about impersonation scams, in which unwitting employees follow directions—with unfortunate results.

CoBank’s Fraud Wise helps you avoid becoming a victim of fraud. In this episode of Fraud Wise, we’re talking about malware and the risk of account takeover, potentially locking down your systems, stealing customer data and taking funds from your accounts.

CoBank’s Fraud Wise helps you avoid becoming a victim of fraud. It’s a sad fact that employees are sometimes responsible for fraud against their own companies, potentially stealing significant amounts of money. In this episode of Fraud Wise, we’re talking about internal controls you can put in place to reduce your risk of employee fraud.