Common Financial Scams and How To Keep Your Family Safe

The best offense is a good defense, particularly when it comes to protecting your family’s well-being. In order to know the best ways to protect your family’s assets, you should know where money crimes most often occur.

Here are some of the most common ways that people steal money, and what you can do to protect yourselves.

Employee Theft

If you’re a small business owner, you likely have employees. Unfortunately, there is a very high chance of employees stealing from the workplace. There are all sorts of reasons for why. From economic hardship to feeling disgruntled with you as an employer.

Employees may steal merchandise, hack sensitive information, or even embezzle money. In many cases, they never get caught. However, employers who do manage to catch an employee in the act will need to press charges if they hope to seek compensation for their crimes. Either the accused employee will admit to their crimes, or they’ll hire a criminal defense attorney and go to trial.

While you as an employer can’t entirely eliminate the possibility of employee theft, they can significantly reduce the chances by engaging in a more rigorous hiring process.

Credit Card Fraud

Thieves may get access to your card number and charge transactions without you even knowing. Often they don’t even need a physical card to commit the theft. It’s as simple as getting access to your card number. It can happen so fast that your card could be completely maxed out in a matter of minutes before you even know what’s happening.

The best way to protect yourself is to monitor your cards closely. Keep an eye on any unauthorized charges and report them right away. If you still have a magnetic strip card, consider switching to a chip card for increased security.

Tax Return Theft

It’s possible for a thief to get their hands on your family’s social security numbers and file your taxes for you. When the refund arrives at their address, they cash it in for themselves and disappear.

Sound nuts? It’s more common than you think, ranking as one of the top forms of scams that the IRS have to deal with.

The best way to guard yourself is to keep your family’s sensitive information like social security numbers in a safe place. Filing your taxes early will also reduce the risk of tax return theft.

Phishing Websites

Theft occurs online when a criminal steals your information through a website. They do it either by hacking the website’s data or cloning the site. Victims can be scammed for thousands without even realizing it.

The best way to guard yourself is to stay savvy with how the internet works. Don’t open suspicious links or websites. Don’t answer emails which ask you for sensitive information like your account number. Always double check the URL of a website before handing over your credit card number or social security number. Make sure that your kids know not to open suspicious programs or websites too.