Business Or Commercial Identity Theft
What is "business" or "commercial identity theft"?
Business and commercial identity theft, usually occurs when someone actually goes ahead and opens up fictitious businesses under your name. And what they're going to first to do is get merchant status under your name. Merchant status means the ability to accept Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. Once they're able to accept credit cards under your name, they'll go ahead and rack up as much credit card fraud as possible and then they just simply walk away and don't pay the bills. They'll also get loans under that fictitious business' name, they'll get credit with other vendors under that business' name, and they'll max that credit to the limit and then they'll just skip, and you're the one left holding the bill.
What kinds of information do identity thieves typically steal from businesses and how do they use it?
Often an identity thief who's compromising your business might be looking for your employees' identification numbers. They're looking for tax ID numbers from your businesses so they can actually submit that to all the other different vendors so that they can get credit, and then max out that credit, default on it, and it's your business that's going to be stuck paying the bills.
What are the consequences of business identity theft?
The consequence of business identity theft is that you really have to bring in professionals to assist you here, because there's a significant amount of damage to your brand's reputation. Your name, your business brand. All of the different organizations, other businesses that you do business with, you're going to have to straighten out with all of them so that you can begin to do business with them, with your good name, again.
