VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Hey, what’s up, everybody? It’s Justin Live from B2B vault, the payment technology podcast with your host Allen Kopelman and we’ll be providing you educational information about business payments, FinTech, decentralized finance, and the technology businesses use in today’s world. And in today’s podcast, we’re going to be talking about personal and business credit.
How not to get fraud on your account. A lot of that going on around right now. It happened to me during Christmas. It’s, whatever, it’s definitely a thing that you want to be on top of you, you don’t want to just be making, letting your information go everywhere, signing up to websites, be mindful.
There are a lot of ways to prevent fraud from happening. But I think as consumers, we get lazy as a people. We put our trust in things that we can’t even see. So, I think it’s important that create good strong passwords, and make sure what you’re signing up for.
There, there’s a bunch of things that you could do and so we’re going to dive into that. So first I’m going to give three tips that you should do. Because we’re going to talk about credit as it relates to your personal credit and your business as a business. So, there are three things that I do.
One, I have Credit Karma. Okay. Not very it’s free. Okay. Now some credit cards like Capital One also give you like; they call it Credit Wise. If you have that card, it’s free. I also use Experian, because most everybody, when they’re pulling credit is using either Experian or TransUnion. Um! When they pull your credit to see if you have credit for your business or your personal, and then there’s one called NAV. NAV,
yeah. And that one’s just for business. Yeah, that’s the one I use for my business. So, I suggest, you get as many, you get at least. Even banks have them now. Yeah, banks, like my bank gives you also an Experian. You just have to activate it, like it’s not automatically. Like on Truist! Whatever,
I don’t know. You’re with Truist, they give you a little extra thing on Experian, like a little different twist! But I suggest they’re free, sign up for them and they’ll send you an alert basically if anybody, tries to apply for credit. You’re going to see it, or somebody there’s a lien put against your business or something like that.
Or somebody files a UCC or any of that stuff. You’re going to get a notification from those websites. Nav, I checked that one day I got an email from them. I go, oh, this is weird. And I saw that somebody was trying to put a UCC on my business. So, I contacted the company. I say, we never did business with you.
They said, oh, oops, the wrong person! With somebody else with a similar type of name, not even in Florida, but they were looking to, get somebody’s attention. Ah! So let me tell you a couple of stories of things that happen all the time here in the office. So, people apply for a merchant account online. They like a hit a landing page.
They hit the website, they fill out the apply now button, where they fill out a lead form or they contact us through another lead form. Or we get some leads from other sources we have. And then what happens is we look at those leads, and we check to see, oh, the name of the business, the address. And then a couple of telltale signs are, did the person give us like Justin@Justin’sairconditioning.com or did he give us.
Justin. Or not even Justin it’ll be whatever, James. Yeah, or something! It could be even like [email protected]. Exactly. Something like that. So, we look at that, that’s a minus. We go to the website and check to see; does the website phone number and the phone number they gave are even close to the same or the same area code. But someone might give their cell phone number, instead of the business phone number. And then those are, and then if they gave us like their ID, we looked like not all the time, you can get a fake ID or does the business check actually look like a business check or does it look like some personal check or something somebody made in Photoshop?
You can tell sometimes you can’t tell, you, you don’t know. But what one, some of the things that we do is we’ll call up like the bus we’ll call the person on the phone. And one thing we don’t like is, excuse me, we don’t really if they’re using one of those text-to-voice numbers or a Google phone number, that’s already, you got, you lost points for that.
Because we want to get an actual cell phone or a land. We do not deal in those numbers. And we also have another way, we have a website we go to, and it can check the phone number and tell you whether it’s a landline or a cell phone, it’s not as so accurate as who the owner is. But you’ll know whether it’s a cell phone or a landline because otherwise, it comes up NA. Right!
That’s one of those voices, one of those fake whatever, a Google number or text a voice or there’s a whole bunch of these services actually called SIP “sip”, and some scammers actually buy these sip lines and then they can use fake phone numbers that they just make up on the fly just gives them like available phone number and it’ll just ring to their computer or something.
Don’t, I don’t know. Technology, man. Yeah, technology’s good and bad. And then what we’ll do is even if the person does answer the phone, we will call the phone number on the website and ask for that person. And so, I was going to tell you two brief stories. One I had this guy call me, call up.
I didn’t really like the phone call. The business had three locations. He didn’t know a lot about the business, because I like to ask people questions. If I called you up Justin and I said, oh, you have a website company. You probably would talk to me for 10 or 15 minutes telling me all about your company easily.
So, this guy didn’t, couldn’t answer very many questions, and I threw easy stuff out that he would know oh, how many locations do you have? He said, oh, just the one I’m looking at the website there are three locations. So, I knew this was not the guy. So, after I got him off the phone, I called the business.
I asked for the owner. The owner says don’t bother me with this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He cursed me out. I said I’ll gladly send you this information, if I was you, I would be checking my credit, my business credit. Long and behold, about a month later, the guy calls me up with the police and the FBI.
This person managed to open up half a dozen merchant accounts. Ran up over 50 grand in fraudulent charges. Now all those credit card companies started sending letters to his business and they were like, how did you know that it was fake? I’m like, are you guys kidding me? Like I told the cops, I’m like, whoever opened these accounts just did zero checking.
They just sent it, the guy’s paperwork, and the guy sent it back. They. Did it, they gave the guy, the virtual terminal. That’s also a big key because we did a podcast. What’s a virtual terminal? Okay. I know what it is. Justin now knows what it is. But it’s not like a, it’s a technical term.
It’s not like a, it’s not like a term unless you were familiar with if you were familiar with it. You would call it a cash register, right? No, but I’m saying if you were familiar or you would say, oh, PayPal, do you have a PayPal kind of thing? But I’m saying you would call it a cash register I feel like. I don’t know what you do, it’s virtual.
A virtual cash register. I’m just saying it’s more of a technical term. Yeah, it’s super technical. That somebody that’s had a merchant account before that’s the only way they would know about it, right? Yes. If you used it before you would know about it. Because I guess I’ve heard it so much in the past year that I’ve been here that I’m like, it’s embedded in my brain.
Right or someone will ask oh, I want to authorize.net. I didn’t call PayPal a virtual terminal. You called it PayPal! Yeah, people call it by the name PayPal! Online banking. Offnet, NMI, they’ll just they’ll say, oh, I need some, something like that. Something like PayPal.
So those are the tough ones. Which is a virtual terminal if you. In essence. Yes. Because you could do it all on. The guy, so I’ve told the police that, was on the phone with the police twice. What did a cop say when he said that? So, the cop said, why did you call the business? So, I said I wanted to warn the guy that somebody was trying to defraud his identity.
And I said the business owner didn’t really care. What did the cops say? The cops like, okay. And I told them, I said, the odds are that this person might have enough information to open up a merchant account. Now some companies might open the merchant account with federal tax ID only, or maybe they’re using, what’s that credit, Lexus Nexus. Right!
So, I guess my point I don’t know, is not my point, but my question would be, this is what the hell are they going to do now that they have a merchant account? They could go get some fake credit cards. And then run some scam credit cards, the dark web that you’ll buy some credit cards. I never dabbled in the dark web, to be honest!
No, but everybody’s, information’s on the dark web. I log into my Credit Karma. It’s oh, your info is on the dark web. Okay, great. It’s there everything but my social hasn’t been exposed. Thank God! But you know that otherwise, if it is, then you better lock your credit. I had to just lock my credit.
So, you have to lock your credit if your social has ever been exposed. Your social was exposed, we found out, remember that did. And shout out to you guys out in California, just giving away money for free. Some guy who lives in California got over 50 grand of unemployment benefits, but that was not me. I lived in south Florida, Fort Lauderdale. Yeah, it’s crazy!
And it happened to me too, where somebody got my social. It’s crazy. Years ago, and I sent in my tax return and then they sent me a bill back for 50 grand. Yeah. I was like 50 grand for what? And I get on the phone, there was no email, and they take forever to deal with you the IRS!
Remember what I was telling you about, I got a random bill from the IRS. Yeah. So, I talked to a tax professional. Right! Do you know that the IRS can just put on a, put a number up saying that you owe them if you’ve never filed taxes, or if you don’t file taxes or however your social security landed on someone’s lap and they look at your, whatever your file?
And you’re like, ah, he hasn’t filed taxes in a really long time. He owes. $3,242. Yeah, they just make a number up! Literally, that’s literally can make up a number and they send you a bill and they sent me a bill. So, I call and I’m like, so how can they come up with this number? There’s absolutely no rhyme or reason for them to come up with the number.
The woman said that it could be for any reason, it could be a total of your tax returns. Five years previous or whatever there is absolutely no algorithm or ever anything at all that she could give. What she told me I had to do. I had to tell them that they were full of crap. Like I have to fight it.
Like literally I have to fill out some paperwork and tell them that it’s wrong. It’s Nuts. You there’s no way that I owe this much in taxes. I didn’t make that much amount of money. And then they’ll fix it, but until then, they’ll just want you to pay it. I had to go through the same thing, and I had to get affidavits that I never worked in Arizona.
It was a little crazy, I was living in Florida! I signed two affidavits already. It was nuts. So now this guy’s getting five, six letters in the mail. This guy got fake credit cards, probably bought him on the dark web. Then he charged them up. Did the business owner call you back? Yeah. He called me, with the police!
No, I’m saying what did he say when he was talking to you? Oh, the business owner. He’s I wish I would’ve listened to you when you told me I should watch my credit, I should have done something. Yeah, what a jerk! But he didn’t listen! And then just the other day, my assistant. Didn’t this just happen like two months ago too?
Someone else was calling like, hey. Yeah, it’s happened, like in the last few months, it’s happened at least four times, then the other day, Anna, my assistant answers the phone and it’s another guy who we had called and warned. And he told me, got bills in the mail. Two or three credit card processors with chargebacks over 10 grand.
And I told them, I said there’s only one thing for you to do call the cops. You got to call the police. You got to do a police report and then send it to those companies. And you got to watch your credit because they’re going to try to put it on your personal credit and believe it or not.
I think if you have Lexus Nexus or a tool like that, and you put in all the business information and the federal tax ID, I bet you, there’s a pretty good chance that software will give you the last four of that person’s social. I wouldn’t doubt it. I have no idea because I know those tools. It’s ridiculous if you look online.
No, but. Most websites have your last four pretty visible. So, we’ve had a few! Do we ask for social? Yeah, but I’m saying we’ve had a few people like call us back and they’re like having a big problem. Now, I don’t know who these credit card processors are that just open these accounts,”Willy Neilly”.
But they shouldn’t be doing that. No! We call every single person. Like even if they go and apply online, we call them, we make sure it’s a real person. We check the address; we make sure they are real! That’s amazing to me that there are companies out there that are just like, oh yeah. You have a big company; I don’t want to throw. It’s Jim Belushi he is starting a new business.
I don’t want to throw what; I don’t want to throw names happen. You have a mega-size company. I know that will be. And they got people in a cubicle, they need they’re on a quota. There’s going to sign the person up and then let it fly. And then it goes to underwriting. Underwriting looks at, they go, oh, 10 grand a month.
Oh, looks like a real business. “Winner”. Let’s approve it. Boom. And then they ship a terminal out. Next thing the guy’s got fraudulent credit cards. They might even be a friend’s credit cards, and then they just all do a chargeback. And then the guy, the money went to the bank account, but then they start hunting down the real business owner and all that.
That’s crazy. And when I was at this conference, I was at a conference in Atlanta. They were talking about, fraud and businesses. Here I just talked to a guy. Just before we got on the podcast, I get a phone call from a guy who’s a wholesaler, right? One of his new sales guys took an order over the phone.
For a couple of hundred bucks shipped the stuff to the person. Then he got another order for another couple hundred bucks, and shipped the stuff to the person, the same person. Then the guy placed another order for 2,700 bucks. The business owner never checked the address where the stuff was going.
They never asked a guy for a business license. Or anything to prove that it was a business just took the credit card over the phone, and keyed it in. Boom. It got shipped to this logistics company. Okay. This is one of the oldest scams. We call it the freight forwarder scam. I could just go through a whole list of scams, but the freight forwarder scam, that’s a really good one, it’s not a good one!
It’s a really scummy one. It’s smart. That’s where I place an order with Justin’s company, I convince them. They always do the same thing. They start off with a small order for a couple of hundred bucks. Justin’s oh great I made a sale. Boom, check! Ships out the stuff It goes to a freight.
He’s not, he doesn’t look the address up to see if it’s what the guy said. It is. It goes to this freight forwarder’s office that freight forwarder knows to forward the package wherever it’s supposed to really go to the scammer could be out of the country, even. Could be, you don’t know. So, then they do it again and then they get you for a big one because now you think the guy’s a good customer because he bought a couple of hundred bucks.
He bought a couple of hundred bucks then boom. And I’ve seen it where they’ve tried to. We had a guy years ago that the people told him, oh, we’re going to give you an extra thousand bucks and you give it to the freight forwarder when they get the check for a thousand bucks.
I told the guy go, dude, that is a scam, and you will get scammed, and you will lose that thousand bucks. You will lose all the money. He’s he told me, he goes, no, you’re preventing me from making a sale. Da, I go, no! So, the guy didn’t listen to me. Fulfilled the order. And it was printing too, it was like a printing place. It was a whole bunch of printing. Guess what happened? They ran the credit card the next day, the chargeback came in before and they already printed all the stuff. And then the freight forwarder showed up. Obviously, they didn’t give the stuff to the freight forwarder because they got a chargeback.
This is a scam; it has scams all over it. Even though I have some, I have another guy who sells toners online, when toners used to be big. Now it’s not so big anymore. I think if I were to buy another printer, I would get like that eco tank thing from Epson. I hear it’s a real pain in that butt.
No, it’s a pain in the butt to refill, but I don’t know. Looks pretty cool. Also, there is a service that people come out and do it though. Yeah, there are people that come out and do it. I’ve even seen like rental now where you can rent the printer. And then they’ll come out and put like a really nice printer in your office, but we don’t print enough paper to do really mess with that.
But some people use that and those companies, went out and bought like a lot of used printers when offices closed down and stuff, and now they just fix them up and rent them out till they break them. They shit. They throw them in the garbage. Yep. Excuse me. Bad word! Shitcan, oh, I’m sorry. That used to be on the list of the seven dirty words you couldn’t say!
No, so you got to work, you got to watch out, your personal credit and your business credit it’s very important. So, the tips were Experian, Trans Union, check your bank, check your credit card, and see what they offer you for free. NAV that’s for business credit. Yeah, because when you sign up to which call it even Experian. Right!
I’m pretty sure you can activate credit-wise in Experian. No, credit-wise is from Capital One! No, that’s their problem. Okay, yeah, it’s not credit-wise, but there’s something similar inside Experian. Yeah, in Experian they’ll watch your credit. They don’t usually watch your business credit. No! NAV does a great job with that though.
Yeah. Nav will give you notifications every time you make, you pay your bill. Yeah. Depends on your vendors. If your vendors are connected, reporting it, then it’s reported. But most credit cards report on your personal, not to your business, some report to your business, they report to your business, but then they don’t report on your personal.
I have a tip too. Also, you should do some, like when you’re operating do some reverse lookups, look up yourself, and look up your business every now and then. Check out to see if there are any Facebook pages that have been created that aren’t you, any social media handles make sure you know yours. No websites, nefarious websites! That’s right.
Check your email, you know what I mean! Somebody makes like your website and then they’ll put like .net .info or. shop. Yeah, I saw one today. Anyone who doesn’t have an SSL certificate attached to your website. You are tripping! People are leaving your website as soon as they get there because they don’t see the little lock.
It used to be green. Google stopped because they said it was like being, I don’t know, what’s the word I’m looking for? I don’t know. They stopped doing that. No, they stopped doing it because it made it seem like, oh, he’s got a green check mark, but I don’t. So, it was like too much favoritism.
Yeah. That’s it made it look like they were being favored the other websites were being favored, but it was, it’s obviously not. It’s just for security purposes, right? Yeah. And now, a lot of the hosting companies like Go Daddy, Blue host, and WP. Whatever that’s giving you free SSL. Like managed WordPress hosting or managed hosting.
And then those managed hosting all include SSL certificates. I remember when I, ed. Managed hosting might not work best for your company. Right! Don’t you know, obviously say if you have a small, but if you have a small business and you only got a couple of domains, managed WordPress hosting will get the job done! But if you’re, an e-commerce store, you might want to look at something that’s a little bit more robust that can handle the traffic, but oh, managed WordPress hosting account.
Usually typically comes with an SSL certificate hosting. Subdomains so that you could build landing pages for your products and stuff like that. Yeah, man, I would definitely do that. Yeah, it usually comes with like extra little security features. An SSL certificate, if you’re buying a domain, see the thing is, people, don’t even understand.
So, they think, oh, I just bought my domain, allen.com. Now what. Now you need to find the hosting, and so that’s where the hosting comes with the features. Typically, when you buy a domain, it doesn’t, you might get an email address with it for free or whatever.
But other than that, no, you have to go to the hosting provider platform, whatever you know which one it is. And there are plenty of security options. Yeah. You got to secure everything down. So, make sure, to be careful with your credit, your business credit, and your personal credit, and have proper reporting set up.
Yep. So that you can find out. Anything is being reported on your business. And if someone calls you and says, hey, did you open a merchant account? Don’t ignore that person. Find out why they’re calling and make sure that you take care of whatever it is because you will like these other people, two, or three people in the last couple of months.
You will start getting letters in the mail from people trying to collect this money. That’s our podcast for today. We talked about business in personal credit and security for your business. So, thank you for listening to the B2B vault Peace out. Follow us on social at B2B vault, the website, B2B vault.info, and you can book a meeting with us.
Text the word BOOK to 9 5 4 8 2 7 9 8 1 8. So do everybody have a great day! Peace!
