The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is putting a price tag on fraud with 20 per cent of small businesses taken in by scammers and 44 per cent of them don’t even report the fraud to police.
Those firms that were conned lost, on average, 62 hundred dollars in the last year. Small businesses spent an average of $2,900 over the last year on fraud prevention.
Fraudulent payments are by far the most common fraud as well as paying for goods and services never delivered.
The most common attempted frauds on small businesses are email scams and phishing.
More than half of business owners who were taken in say the stress and hassle are actually worse than the money stolen with lost time, stress and a negative effect on staff morale.
