By Jack Buttine with Buttine Insurance
Someone Just Stole Your Money
That’s what Crime Insurance is supposed to protect against… everyone says this cannot happen to me … but it absolutely can.
Insurance only covers the two most common kinds of crime losses about half the time.
Some common crime losses are caused by employees. These include embezzlement, wire transfer fraud and other types of employee dishonesty. All are covered by insurance.
Other common losses are caused by non-employees who represent themselves as either vendors or your employees and get you to send them money. Never covered by insurance.
Computer Crime
Before you say – again, it will never happen to me, believe me – you are vulnerable.
The way the schemes work is fraudsters monitor your emails and see where you usually send money.
Then, once they see who your vendors are and where you frequently send money, the scam starts with an email that looks as if it comes from a regular vendor.
The fraudster may even copy key persons in your company or add a string of typical emails between employees.
The email tells you that an account of yours is overdrawn and you need to wire funds to a special account to fix the situation.
Or, it may say a vendor to whom you usually wire money has changed their bank and you should send your usual payment to a new bank.
Totally bogus!
You tell the bank to execute the instruction because the fraudster’s email looks like so many that you have seen before. However, the bank probably will not be able to recover your funds from the fraudster’s bank.. Plus, they won’t make good your loss because your bank did nothing wrong. They simply did what you told them to do.
And, that is how it works.
We have seen this happen to large and small companies. But we are all busy and sometimes we just do not check.
A simple call to the “legitimate” vendor could have prevented every loss we have seen.
Since show mangers are vulnerable to this kind of loss, you may want to talk about Crime insurance and loss prevention with Jack Buttine, 212-697010100 x 21 or jmb@buttine.com – IAEE’s Preferred Insurance Provider who has over 30 years’ experience insuring shows of all sizes.
