You have a business which is great because you are servicing a need and making money. Another side of the business is protecting yourself from fraud – everyday there  are people who are trying to feed off your positive energy you have in order to have your money go into their pocket. Fraud protection is part of business that you need to take into account or you will have no money in your pocket. A book which helps small business not to get ripped off is by Carla Carr called Business Predators, Insomniac Press, London, 2009.

Fraud is one of those areas where it will save you and the company money, but it will not make you money. If you have never been hit with fraud, congratulations, but there are great many stories to heard. Part of the protection is simply delaying decisions, if someone wants you to make a decision in an instant, slow the process down to next week or next month. In your business, part of the process is you have to trust someone, and those doing the fraud, will go to great lengths to sound and feel very similar to the legitimate businesses. We all use the internet, it is a great tool and our lives would be different without it, but you can not assume everything on the internet is legitimate. Every year it cost less to do a website, there are free ones, information is collected and can be used. The large companies tended to collect millions of names are not necessarily concerned with yours, fraud is the opposite – it is concerned with your name.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, these are the companies which are profitable and have been in existence for a number of years. While there is fraud in various divisions of all large corporations, we have seen the large banks in the US pay billion dollar fines but are not guilty, most of the people are trying to do a honest job. As long as most people are still trying to do a honest job, owning the stocks which pay a dividend means the likelihood of avoiding fraud is very high.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions