October 3, 2006

Learning to Fight Fraud. You Just Have To.

If you plan on growing your business and part of your business is a retail operation you (or someone you appoint) MUST lean to fight fraud.

If you sell products, accept credit cards, ship products and etc you must take the time to learn the tricks that fraudulent buyers use to steal from you. If you don't take the time to learn about credit card fraud and other aspects aspects of digital theft you'll end of losing money.

CSOonline writes how US Digital Media, a Phoenix-based company that sells blank CDs and DVDs and distributes the equipment to burn content and labels onto those discs, has learned to combat fraud.

In one scam, US Digital Media lost $30,000 worth of products and had to fire the clerk who shipped the order. Other employees also suffered due to the lost funds as well.

CSOonline writes Pirates, sometimes running businesses as big as or bigger than Pignotti's, typically use credit card fraud and check fraud to acquire large volumes of blank media before their forged checks bounce or before credit card statements arrive at the home of an unwitting victim of identity theft.

So for Pignotti and her husband, Chris, who is the company's founder and president, fraudulent purchases are a constant risk, more pronounced than at other midsize companies, and one for which she's always had a singular mind-set on how to react: Take them down. "I just feel a patriotic thing inside me," she says. "This is a problem for the whole country, and we're not going to solve it until we all do something about it."

Part of Pignotti's job is also to work with local and state law enforcement officers and be willing to testify in court.

As a consumer purchasing things (online and offline) you must protect yourself. As a business SELLING things you must also protect yourself.

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