Helping small business avoid scams

Posted on 23 Mar 2012

Please note: this is an old article

It was published in March 2012, so the information may be out-of-date.

Small businesses can arm themselves against scammers by watching Stevie’s Scam School, a series of YouTube videos produced by Consumer Affairs Victoria.

Consumer Affairs Victoria produced the six short videos to show how scammers operate in bogus government agency scams, overpayment scams, domain name fraud, unauthorised advertising, computer repairs and office supplies scams.

Greater Shepparton Small Business Development Officer Peter Barclay is aware from many people that have been scammed out of hundreds of dollars innocently paying for what is freely available information from government sites.

"It's very disappointing to hear from people wanting to start a business that have been scammed by bogus agencies pretending to act as government agencies".

Small businesses are a big target for scammers, who are using more sophisticated techniques and technology to make people believe the offers and documents they provide are genuine. It can be very difficult to track down scammers once they have taken the money - so one of the best defences for small businesses is learning how to spot and avoid them.

A common scam that traps businesses is the unauthorised advertising scam, also known as a false billing scam. The scammer sends a business an invoice for an advertisement or listing in a publication that the business hasn't ordered. Busy small businesses often pay the professional-looking invoice without checking its legitimacy. In 2010-11, Consumer Affairs Victoria received almost 300 reports of this kind of scam.

To find out how to protect yourself against this scam and others, watch the Stevie's Scam School videos at www.consumer.vic.gov.au/scamschool and share it with other businesses. 

To receive more small business updates, you can subscribe to Consumer Affairs Victoria's free email updates at www.consumer.vic.gov.au/news-and-events/email-updates