Ep. 2 How to Avoid Business Scams

How to be SMART AF about business scams directed at YOUR business

Have you received invoices for services you don’t have for your business? Torie Mathis and her co-host Sean Mathis give you tips to keep your business safe from scammers.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 02

[00:00:00] Torie: Totally scary that somebody would just be like 228, write your check and go buy.

You know what I really hate. I hate these calls. Like it saying that I made some purchase or you have these scammy calls. It’s like all I get anymore. My message. Like, I don’t even answer the phone. Because they’re all scammy calls and it worries me that some of these business owners are just not going to understand that, these people are scamming you, some of the things are super, super legitimate sounding or. 

[00:00:43] Sean: They might be legitimate. And they’re just trying to up that free account to a paid account. 

[00:00:48] Torie: Yes. Yes. And I think with like things that are going on right now, things are getting a little bit worse. So you gotta be really careful and check and double-check of where, where these things are coming from, like the worst one. And this isn’t even business-related Sean got an E bill from the state of Georgia for a speeding ticket for no, it was driving in the task lane and we hadn’t been to, to Atlanta in forever crazy, but it looked legit. So legit. So we got one in the mail. And so I really want people to know, like this says, like domain listings on the site. Let’s see what that looks like. Domain listings totally looks like a legit bill for us for 200 bucks, $228. 

[00:01:36] Sean: Marketing company. Yeah. 

[00:01:39] Torie: Like shark media, like, like we, we actually like host websites.

So obviously we’re not, you know, being built by another company called domain listings for website listing service. But anybody that would get something like this, especially if it’s just going to an accountant’s like totally scary that somebody would just be like 2 28, write your check and go buy. So you really got to watch where stuff like that?

[00:02:01] Sean: No. Where your stuff’s from? Like who would you buy your domain? Like not these guys, but it’s real easy to just watch some sort of list and they got your information and they’ll try to send fake bills. 

[00:02:15] Torie: It looks like some of these overseas ones that you get saying you you’re owing on your taxes, right?

Like the IRS is after you call us back and give us your social and we’ll check it out for. Like you gotta be pretty diligent on these types of things. 

[00:02:30] Sean: I won’t answer the phone until after I’ve Googled the phone number. 

[00:02:34] Torie: So email. So what about emails? Do you get fake emails for anything? 

[00:02:40] Sean: Yeah. Most of them make it into my spam. Gmail is pretty good about it. Every once in a while they’ve pulled, you know, they send it to the. Info at Miles Through Time or something. They tried to get me on some software thing or the most often actually it’s the Lake Shark Media email. And they’re trying to. So for white labeling or SEO or crap that we 

[00:03:04] Torie: do ourselves, I get a lot of the SEO ones now is wonder, like, what they’re going to do with these people are people actually answer those.

Like, we’ll help you get more traffic to your website. 

[00:03:13] Sean: So then the dead giveaway is it’s coming from a g-mail. 

[00:03:18] Torie: Yes, because people who are really serious about their business, use a Gmail account. You know, it’s like big daddy for $600 

[00:03:27] Sean: Gmail. Cause like Gmail is more likely to let it go, so, and would not go to their spam.

[00:03:31] Torie: Okay. And you got to say like you said Gmail before, but we have our business emails go through Gmail. So that’s like Sean at Miles Through Time or Sean at lake shark media, like we use legit emails. We’re not using those. 

[00:03:44] Sean: Go to one hub with when we use Gmail for that, but we can access all of our different emails and they all, they all compile together.

But then like the very first, if it’s some weird email and they’re trying to sell me on something, you click that little drop down and see what email it’s coming from. And if it’s coming from some private email, no, no, no, not going to do anything with you. Okay. That’s not the professional level that I even want to work with. You, you should have some sort of. Actually, but at least go through that trouble to then try to spam me. You know.

[00:04:18] Torie: I think the domains and domain listings and security type things or hosting, I don’t know if like business owners don’t understand where their stuff’s at. So it’s really easy to kind of dupe them because I’ve gotten ones. This is for hosting type things, but I’ve seen ones also saying like, you need to register your domain or where. You’re going to take your website down or something. And these things are not real. 

[00:04:41] Sean: This was actually like it’s for a domain listing like that. It’s not even a thing. It literally, they put no effort into this other than to make it look legitimate to where you think you’re actually like, looks like that’s my domain, so I must have to pay for it. But it’s nothing like it, it absolutely, it does. It doesn’t even tell you it’s for something specific, other than it’s your annual domain listing that, that you don’t need. 

[00:05:12] Torie: So if you get something like this like you really need to find out like if you have a web person or maybe your accountant or bookkeeper, that’s been, been paying your, your website bills or your domain field.

Figure out where that actually came from so that when something like this comes through, you don’t get sucked in and just pay it and forget about it because you only have to pay for a domain, you know, once a year, an annual and it is not $228. It’s like less than 15 bucks. And if it’s anything more than that, then it is a total scam, and these kinds of days, it’s easy to be afraid that you’re going to lose your website or lose something. And, and so you want to pay something quickly, but you gotta, you gotta look out for yourself. You gotta look out for your business. Cause there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of great people out there, but unfortunately, there’s a lot of crappy people out there too that are just trying to.

[00:06:07] Sean: That’s like the peach passing. Like if I really did drive to Atlanta, like for business every single morning, it’d be like, maybe I jumped in there and you just pay it. Obviously, I don’t. So I knew right off the bat that wasn’t me. One quick little Google search took me to the Georgia state website to then look up the number to see if it was even a legit number that I was being ticketed for essentially. And it didn’t exist. So not only did I know I didn’t do it. I verified that it was completely fake and I got sent two letters. 

[00:06:44] Torie: And they sent it to you again? No, no, I haven’t got mine. 

[00:06:46] Sean: So, I mean, who knows, obviously it’s working. I guarantee they’re collecting. 

[00:06:51] Torie: That’s the scary part that it, how many people are actually paying, like all of these things that are being sent out that aren’t real.

Be careful. Be careful. Take care of yourself. Okay.