Five Ways Small Businesses Can Fight Fraud

5. Watch non-core vendors. PRGX recently found that one client who had gone through a hiring phase ended up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to a completely fictitious vendor with a P.O. Box address in India. Also be aware that new employees might not be as knowledgeable about what fraud looks like, so if they get an invoice, they will pay it without as much scrutiny as a more experienced employee.

Mary Ellen Biery is a research specialist at Sageworks, a financial information company. She is a veteran financial reporter whose works have appeared in The Wall Street Journal and on Dow Jones Newswires, CNN.com, MarketWatch.com, CNBC.com, and other sites. She received her undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University, where she graduated cum laude, and her master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.