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We all know about people being the victims of identity theft. Probably some of you reading this have been victims yourselves.
Everyone likes to expand their business opportunities and crooks are no exception.
During the time of pandemic, when many businesses have been shut down and others are not working out of their offices, almost everyone is distracted to an extent. This is the perfect opportunity for crooks to move in.
In 2019 Dun & Bradstreet saw a 100 percent increase in business identity theft.
So far in 2020 Dun & Bradstreet is estimating a 258 percent increase in business identity theft.
So what is Business identity theft?
First the hackers do a little intel. They go to the Secretary of State’s web site to look for information like owners and officers.
From there, they get those people’s SSNs from the dark web, along with EINs.
To prove ownership they fabricate clones of business documents and sometimes they will even file those documents with the Secretary of State, using the crook’s mailing address.
Then they build a profile at D&B – either requesting a new number or even hacking existing D&B accounts.
Once D&B approves the new accounts, they let them age for a little while and then start applying for credit. Lots of credit. After all, this is a business. It needs lots of credit.
The first indication that most of the victims find out about it is when debt collectors start contacting them. In these cases, the business owners likely did nothing wrong.
They also use these compromised identities to apply for pandemic assistance and SBA loans.
They will buy look alike domain names so they can communicate in an official seeming manner.
Sometimes they will actually rent an office in the name of the company so there is some place to receive deliveries of their ill-gotten loot. The rent is paid for with a stolen credit card.
The things being delivered to this fake office space were expensive, easily resellable items like computers. The crooks come by after the stuff is delivered, pick it up and resell it.
In one case, the loot totaled around $75,000 and when the real business owner went to the Sheriff, he just yawned.
As a business, you don’t have the same protections that consumers have, so getting things cleaned up is no where as easy. You may actually have to file lawsuits. The laws say that as a business, even a small business, you are supposed to be a sophisticated user and know all this stuff – that most small businesses do not know.
D&B has some recommendations here on things you can do to protect your business identity. Most of it is free, but it takes time and you have to do it frequently. Or, D&B offers a paid service to monitor it for you. It’s not clear why you have to pay to check up on what the crooks are doing but you do.
And if you expect the police to help you, think again. If it is not at least a million dollars, law enforcement is very unlikely to take any interest at all.
In fairness to the police, the odds of catching these guys is pretty low, especially if they are in a foreign country – unless they are doing it on a large scale. Or are stupid, which does happen some time.
Credit: Brian Krebs