In this episode of Fraud Talk, ACFE Training Director Jason Zirkle, CFE, discuss the most common fraud schemes that arise during a natural disaster and, more specifically, which scams have emerged as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Below is an excerpt from the full transcript, where Zirkle discusses what fraud examiners can do in their companies and communities to help prevent fraud. Download the full transcript in PDF form or listen to the episode at the bottom of this post.

Emily: At the ACFE, we have more than 85,000 fraud examiners worldwide. What can they be doing to help during times of a natural disaster?

Jason: First off, if you're a fraud examiner that's working for a company, let's say in internal audit or something like that, you should build this stuff into your fraud risk assessment and your fraud risk management program. You should already be thinking in terms of an event-type fraud like a natural disaster. Let's say maybe after a natural disaster, you reach out to key personnel and notify them, for example, about the dangers of business email compromise or social engineering and going through that training. There's lots of things that you can do at the company level.

Now, for the community, I would encourage CFEs to be more vocal in their community. For example, right now, we're all at home. We're all stuck. You can reach out to people in your community. You can start a blog. You can reach out to the city or the county and say, "Hey, we know that fraud is ticking up. Is there anything that I can do to help you guys put the word out about fraud in my community?"

I feel like there's lots of novel ways that you can think of. Put it out there on Nextdoor. Put it out there on social media. I actually just posted a few things on Nextdoor, warning my neighborhood of the dangers of fraud right now, and saying, "Hey, just make sure you're paying attention to phishing and you're not clicking on any links," and everything that we already talked about. Social media is a great tool right now to put that word out.

Emily: And just really educating people who may not see this and who don't know all of these ways to protect themselves.

Jason: Yeah, because if you've got people that are not really thinking about fraud in general in their daily lives, they're definitely not thinking about it right now. They've got a lot of other things on their mind. They've got kids at home. They're having to figure out how to homeschool their kids. Their job is maybe in jeopardy. Fraud might be the last thing on their mind, but we need to tell people, "Hey, you're at home right now. Go and start monitoring your bank account. Here's the link to Experian where you can sign up for a free credit monitoring. Here's the link to these different websites where you can read up on these types of fraud." Those are the types of things that people need to be hearing right now.