Scams Against Businesses

• Do business with companies you know and trust. If you don't know them, check them out.
• Understand the offer. Get all the details and promises in writing.
• Check all bills and invoices carefully. It's hard to get your money back once you've paid it to a con artist.
• Guard your financial or other account information. Don't provide it to anyone unless there is a legitimate reason to do so as part of a transaction.
• Educate your employees about avoiding scams. Make sure they understand their roles and responsibilities.

Notable frauds

• Frank Abagnale Jr., US impostor who wrote bad checks and falsely represented himself as a qualified member of professions such as airline pilot, doctor, and attorney. The film Catch Me If You Can is based on his life.
• Eddie Antar, founder of Crazy Eddie, who has about $1 billion worth of judgements against him stemming from fraudulent accounting practices at that company.
• Ramón Báez Figueroa, banker from the Dominican Republic and former president of Banco Intercontinental. Sentenced on October 21, 2007 to ten years in prison for a US$2.2 billion fraud case that drove the Caribbean nation into an economic crisis in 2003.
• Cassie Chadwick, who pretended to be Andrew Carnegie's daughter to get loans.
• Charles Dawson, an amateur British archeologist who claimed to have found the Piltdown man.
• Richard Eaton, an English businessman who was business partners with mobster Paul Vario and Jimmy Burke and was involved in the Lufthansa heist.
• Bernard Ebbers, founder of WorldCom, which inflated its asset statements by about $11 billion.
• Martin Frankel is a former U.S. financier, convicted in 2002 of insurance fraud worth $208 million, racketeering and money laundering.
• Konrad Kujau, German fraudster and forger responsible for the "Hitler Diaries".
• Kenneth Lay, the American businessman who built energy company Enron. He was one of the highest paid CEOs in America until he was ousted as Chairman and was convicted of fraud and conspiracy, although as a result of his death, his conviction was vacated.^[1]
• Nick Leeson, English trader whose unsupervised speculative trading caused the collapse of Barings Bank.
• James Paul Lewis, Jr., ran one of the biggest ($311 million) and longest running Ponzi Schemes (20 years) in US history.
• Gregor MacGregor, Scottish conman who tried to attract investment and settlers for the non-existent country of Poyais.
• Bernard L. Madoff, creator of a $50 billion Ponzi scheme -- the largest investor fraud ever attributed to a single individual.
• Colleen McCabe, British headmistress who stole £½ million from her school.
• Gaston Means, a professional conman during U.S. President Warren G. Harding's administration.
• Michael Milken, "The Junk Bond King".
• Barry Minkow and the ZZZZ Best scam.
• Michael Monus, founder of Phar-Mor, which ultimately cost its investors more than $1 billion.
• Lou Pearlman, former boy-band manager indicted by a federal grand jury in Orlando on charges that he schemed to bilk banks out of more than $100 million.
• Frederick Emerson Peters, US impersonator who wrote bad checks.
• Charles Ponzi and the Ponzi scheme.
• Alves Reis, who forged documents to print 100,000,000 PTE in official escudo banknotes (adjusted for inflation, it would be worth about US$150 million today).
• Christopher Rocancourt, a Rockefeller impersonator who defrauded Hollywood celebrities.
• John Spano, a struggling businessman who faked massive success in an attempt to buy out the New York Islanders of the NHL.
• John Stonehouse, the last Postmaster-General of the UK and MP who faked his death.
• Richard Whitney, who stole from the New York Stock Exchange Gratuity Fund in the 1930s.