THE FASTEST GROWING

By Ian Harvey

t seems too perfect: a new customer calls in an order for $40,000 and as you complete the transaction it seems a minor inconvenience that they’re using three different credit cards. The shipment goes out, you get paid. End of story, right? Not so fast. Some 60 days later there’s a chargeback from the credit card company, the client’s phone is cut off and the e-mails bounce back. “I see it all the time,” says RCMP Cpl.

Louis Robertson, in charge of the Cana- dian Anti-Fraud Centre, a joint forces pro- gram with the Ontario Provincial Police also known as PhoneBusters. “[People] just don’t do their due diligence.” In 2009 there were 2,012 attempts of

22 SECURITY MATTERS • MAY/JUNE 2010

IN THE WORLD

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fraud reported by Canadian businesses of which 444 cases resulted in $2,069,661 in losses. “We think we’re seeing about five per

cent of it reported, and some think it’s only one per cent,” says Robertson. “We’re seeing $500 to $700 million an- nually across Canada, so do the math.” Statistics Canada reports in 2008, about 50 per cent of retailers and finan- cial service businesses, regardless of size, reported some type of fraud in the pre- ceding 12 months. Just under half (47 per cent) were committed by company outsiders while 15 per cent were consid- ered inside jobs. For retailers, return fraud (i.e., getting cash for a stolen item or one

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