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Not Your Parents’ Better Business Bureau: Top BBB Tools to Stop Fraud
October 7, 2025
When you think of the Better Business Bureau, you might picture the place your grandparents went to find a plumber. But today’s BBB is so much more: it’s a modern fraud-fighting resource for both consumers and businesses.
In this episode, Grace sits down with fraud expert Debra Richardson to explore how the BBB has evolved from its 1912 roots into a critical tool for stopping scams before they hit your bottom line. From the powerful BBB Scam Tracker, a free national database of nearly 521,000 reported scams, to weekly scam alert emails, localized fraud education, and resources for validating vendors, the BBB is working on the frontlines of fraud prevention.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
Additional Resources:
Debra Richardson
Debra is an Accounts Payable speaker, consultant, and trainer with over 20 years of experience in AP, AR, general ledger, and financial reporting for Fortune 500 companies including Verizon, General Motors, and Aramark.
Grace Berube
Senior Content Manager, IOFM
Grace is the Senior Content Manager at the Institute of Finance & Management (IOFM), where she has led content strategy and development since 2022. In this role, she oversees all aspects of IOFM’s digital and event-based content, ensuring it remains timely, relevant, and actionable for all financial operations professionals.
Grace manages IOFM’s robust library of site content, leads the organization’s editorial and member webinar programming, and hosts IOFM’s podcast series. She also oversees a team of subject matter experts who contribute thought leadership and educational articles. In additional, Grace curates and manages all speaker content for IOFM’s in-person and virtual events, ensuring consistency and quality across every touchpoint. With nearly three years in the role, Grace brings a deep understanding of the financial operations landscape and a passion for delivering content that empowers professionals to excel in their roles.
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Transcription
Grace Berube: Welcome to the IOFM podcast. This is a podcast for accounts payable and accounts receivable professionals who want to stay in the know with current AP and AR trends and ideas. We'll be interviewing professionals in this space on a wide variety of subjects, including automation, artificial intelligence, career growth, compliance, leadership, and much more.
00:00:33
Good morning, Debra. How are you?
Debra Richardson: Well, good morning, Grace. I am doing just fine.
Grace Berube: Awesome. We're so happy to have you back on the podcast for a really exciting episode. I know that the BBB is not something that we've really talked about on IOFM, but you just published an article for us on the website. Give us a little bit of info about the Better Business Bureau, kind of a little bit of a background, and what you're finding and what you talked about in that article a couple days ago.
00:01:04
Debra Richardson: Yes. Well, I am always, Grace, looking for free tools to do things. Actually, I'm looking for any tools to avoid fraud. So when I come up and find some free tools to combat B2B payment fraud, I'm like all over it. So that article that was recently published really talked about how you can use the Better Business Bureau resources for customer and vendor validations. So those are—that's another resource that can be used for validation, just to make sure that your vendors are real, especially when you're talking about charities at this time of year.
00:01:54
The Better Business Bureau has been there, but it seems like it's reinventing itself. But if you go on their website, their vision is still an ethical marketplace, where buyers and sellers trust each other. They actually still say that, which, again, makes you think of their own reputation as where you go to find a plumber.
Again, they are so much more than that, which I am really finding out. They've got a lot more on there than I would've thought they had. Now, they started off, believe it or not, in 1912, so they're over 100 years old. They started off as a watchdog for false advertising. They've evolved, today, into not only finding that contractor that won't leave your job before it's done, with accreditation and reviews.
00:03:03
Again, reviews are what we always thought about with the Better Business Bureau, but they've really expanded now into, like I was saying before, including tools that you can use to make sure you're not onboarding a fraudulent vendor or fraudulent customer, but also a lot of other fraud resources to prevent both consumer and business fraud. I thought that would make a great podcast for today.
Grace Berube: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when we chatted earlier this week about this potential topic, I really had no idea that that was possible. I think, like you said, it's somewhere that I would think to go. Or people have used [it] in the past, like you said, to find a plumber or to find different businesses, to check in on businesses. I had no idea that it was a potential way to track fraud. What kind of tools do they have on the website, and where should people be starting?
00:03:59
Debra Richardson: And just to be clear, you can still go on there and find that plumber.
Grace Berube: Right, but there's just a lot more to it.
Debra Richardson: Find that accredited plumber. So it's still there, but you can do so many more things.
The first tool, though, that I really want to talk about, because I think it's really great, is the Better Business Bureau (or BBB) Scam Tracker. They call that your fraud early-warning system. It's really a very powerful tool. We will put, right, Grace, the link to all the resources we talk about today in the show notes.
00:04:42
But when you go to the site for the Better Business Bureau, which is bbb.org/scamtracker, you go to the site for the Scam Tracker, you'll see that you can look up an existing scam. Like if you get an email or invoice or a text message and you think it might be a scam, you can come on this site and look it up for free.
How can you look it up? You can look it up based on the business name, based on the website, the email address they gave you, the phone number they gave you, date reported, dollars lost—you can even look it up by state or by zip code, and some other things as well. So they give you a lot of different options for you to find it.
Grace Berube: That's amazing.
Debra Richardson: Yeah, that's really great. But if you don't put in anything and you just go onto the page, it's going to default to all of the most recent scams. It looks like it's order of when they were reported, from the newest to the oldest. And then they'll give you like a—they'll have like a six-month period that they just default [to].
00:06:09
And just to be clear on this Scam Tracker, these are scams that have been entered by the folks that have received them, so from the victims or potential victims, and when they enter in those scams, then the Better Business Bureau, someone from that organization, will review 'em and post 'em. I really love that part because that means that not only do we get to benefit from those folks in our area that have seen the same scams, because sometimes they're regional. But if we have a scam or see a scam, or have been a victim of a scam or potential victim of a scam, we can report it as well so other people can get the benefit of looking it up and knowing that that actually is a scam. So I really do like this.
00:07:08
Grace Berube: Oh, yeah, that's really cool. I think a lot of the times, being able to see what's going on in your area, being just privy to all the things that are actually happening in real time I think is so cool. And I can't think of anything else that would have sort of information.
Debra Richardson: I can't either. So for that reason, I think this is a really powerful tool. Now, I haven't searched for anything, but I've come on here and it's got like from March to September of all of the scams that were reported. By the way, the search results have 62,554.
Grace Berube: Wow!
Debra Richardson: Again, all in like order. But, just looking at the first couple, there's a debt collections scam from Stratton Law, and it really gets into the details. So it says what number it called from. It also identifies the number it wanted you to call, so it gives all the information. And then it goes into detail of what they said on the phone. So that was one.
00:08:23
And then there was a phishing one from JPMorgan. Someone called, pretending to be from JPMorganChase, and then they wanted them to, of course, transfer money via Zelle for a reason. But they even gave the Zelle account number that they wanted them to transfer it to. So where can you go to get that type of information for free, to make sure that if you have suspicions, that if anyone else—to search and see if anyone else has had that same email or same text message or same phone number.
00:09:06
So I think it's really great to have, a great tool for that.
Grace Berube: A great way to check that. And then if you don't see anything, but you do know that it's fraud, put that in yourself because you're going to be helping others at the same time. That's fantastic.
Debra Richardson: Exactly. And I didn't realize that they worked with other national organization, so the data that is collected by Scam Tracker is also shared with the Federal Trade Commission, and then also the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center. I don't know if any of the listeners have been in any of my sessions, or maybe on some of my webinars, but I always quote them for the business email compromise and phishing activity from their latest report. I do that every year.
00:10:00
Now I know. I didn't know that this information is included in that as well. So I think that's great that they are not only collecting it for us to search on their free tool, but then also sharing that and collaborating with other national organizations.
Grace Berube: Yeah, that's incredible. That's really, really cool. Scam Tracker is great. Are there other free tools that you can use on the website, apart from Scam Tracker, too?
Debra Richardson: Yeah. A couple of things. So I have talked about Scam Tracker in the past. I've also talked about their—I guess what they call their Scam Headquarters. If you go to—again, we'll have this link in the show notes, but bbb.org/all/scamtips, you'll get to their Headquarters. Yes, it does have a link to Scam Tracker, and it also has a link to ten tips to avoid scams. But if you scroll down, you'll see they have some scam studies, where they've done some in-depth scam investigations.
00:11:15
They've got business scams, social media scams, romance scams—which nobody ever thinks they're in, but they have those, and then they have more scams. This whole page is just full of all types of scams. It's kind of sorted by category, like personal finance, impersonation scams. We're all familiar with that. But within there, they have different things, like voice hacking, business impersonations, celebrity impersonations. I didn't even know. They have a process server scam.
00:12:01
And, Grace, the reason I bring that up is because, back in the day, when I first got out of college, my first job was with this company that did process serving, so I was a process server. [chuckles] You know what? I can't even believe it. I would just never do that today because sometimes it requires you to go to folks' house. Knowing or seeing that there are process server scams out there is not surprising. Just like when you think your vendor is calling you, or maybe you think your internal team member is calling you on the phone, just like with that and process servers going to a place of business or the house, you don't know who those people are. It could be anybody. They could say they're anybody.
00:12:57
So, yeah, I'm not surprised to see that scam here. I'll probably read through this one a bit, just to see if anything resonates.
Grace Berube: Yeah, totally. Wow.
Debra Richardson: But lots of information on different types of scams from the Better Business Bureau, so this is just a wealth of information.
Grace Berube: Absolutely, signing up for alert emails, things, just staying in the know, it's such an easy way to be on top of your game and making sure that you're getting the most up-to-date information, I think that's awesome.
Debra Richardson: Yeah, and the signing up for their weekly scam alert emails, they actually come every Friday, and that is something that is very new. Again, they are just evolving into a great fraud resource. That didn't come out—I think it was like May or June of this year, so it is very new. And what it does—and of course I signed up for 'em. Every Friday, you get—what I initially thought it was going to be was like a list of all the new scams they got for the week. It's not.
00:14:11
It's more like a deep dive on one particular scam, and then they give you the information on what it is, how fraudsters are using it, and then they also talk about how you can avoid it. So I actually really do like that. So definitely sign up for that. Again, we'll put a link for where you can sign up for those Friday weekly scam alerts.
Grace Berube: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Anything that we've referenced today from the website will be in the show notes here, so lots of different ways to stay informed after today's podcast. There's a little bit more to it, too. You can actually bring the BBB into your company to talk about fraud, too; is that right?
Debra Richardson: Yeah. So they have what they call community-level support through their 501(c)(3). It's called Better Business Bureau (BBB) Educational Foundation. What they do is they will go into schools and businesses and give fraud talks.
00:15:23
Actually, for schools, they have a game that they call Scam Busters. What they like to do is they like to go in, let's say in the junior high, and get them when they are at the point where they might start seeing some of these scams because they may be on social media. So they want to get 'em early. They'll talk about scams. What they like to do is go in, in junior high and do the whole seventh grade class, because Scam Busters is one period.
00:16:02
So they'll take the day and get all your seventh graders, all the seventh grade classes done, and then go back in high school so that they can enforce. I think that's great because now you've got them aware that scammers are out there, and here's what they do.
But I will tell you the way that I found out that they do it. Now, first of all, they've got 90 local offices in the U.S. and Canada, yes. And I went to a small business conference and actually had a session on fraud, so I'm talking to the small business folks and this guy comes up after my session and he gives me his card. He says, "Well, I love what you do. If you ever want me to be on your [unintelligible] or come and talk to different groups, just let me know."
00:16:58
At first, I thought he would be sorry that he told me that [chuckles] 'cause I've had him on two of my podcasts, and then I'm a Certified Fraud Examiner, and so I go to local chapter meetings. I had him come there.
Grace Berube: Hey, we love it. He didn't know what he was signing up for it, but we'll take it.
Debra Richardson: I was like, "Sorry." He was like, "No, no, no." That is what he does. He said he spends most of his time going around either teaching their folks, so they keep up-to-date, or teaching schools or businesses. That is what they do.
And not only that, but he says all the Better Business Bureau local offices do the same thing. So that's a great resource for chapter meetings. They can bring 'em in, have another presenter for that, to come in and talk about fraud, or maybe even right to your business to get more in-depth training that will just help out or be in addition to your cybersecurity awareness training.
00:18:16
Have someone come in and talk to your folks. Everybody can't be there. That's fine. But record it and then everybody can watch. The folks that weren't able to attend can watch. So I think it's as great resource, not just online, to find out about the different frauds. Not just signing up for the weekly emails to get more in depth on a particular fraud topic, or even the Scam Tracker. That's very powerful, so you can look up or report scams. But also to kind of partner with them and to work with your team, to talk about those local scams and how you can avoid those. I think it's just a very powerful resource.
00:19:05
And did I mention that it's free?
Grace Berube: Right? That's the best part. I mean, I'm almost positive that the vast majority of the listeners today didn't know that these free sources existed. From the fact that there's a Scam Tracker—that's fantastic. Weekly emails are awesome, too. But then the fact that you could actually use someone and have them help educate your company. Three new things right now that you can use, and it's all free to you, which is the best—the best word.
Debra Richardson: Right. Now, I will say that it's a mix between when they talk—just like when you look at the resources, it's a mix between consumer and business, but you want them both. And one of the things that just stunned all of the Certified Fraud Examiners in the room when Troy came in and talked to us at our chapter meeting—he asked us. Let me just say, nobody could figure it out. But he asked us, "What is the most-impersonated entity?" We all were like "IRS, federal govt." He was like, "Nope."
00:20:15
Why don't you give it a shot, Grace. Can you think of what it might be?
Grace Berube: I would have no idea. I probably would've said IRS, too.
Debra Richardson: Yeah, that's what we all said.
Grace Berube: Just because I feel like that's the most common guess. I would have no idea.
Debra Richardson: But it's not. You know what it is? It's the Publisher's Clearing House. You would think, what? They're still around? Yes, they are still around. And he says the reason that they are the most-impersonated entity is because, one, everyone has heard of them, but two, no one knows how you enter it.
Grace Berube: That's a really good point. I could imagine getting an email or a call and thinking you'd won, because I've never heard of how it actually works. That's such a good point. Everyone wants $5,000/week for life. [laughter]
00:21:12
Debra Richardson: Yes, everybody wants those balloons and that big check to come to their door. But how do you enter? I wouldn't know. And so the fraudsters take advantage of that because everybody's heard of it, but nobody knows how it works. So they're there to tell you how they want it to work.
Grace Berube: Wow, that's crazy. It's a really, really good point. I never would've thought of that.
Debra Richardson: Yeah, so things like that. I think that's great. And so, again, the Better Business Bureau is just not your parents' or not your grandparents' Better Business Bureau. It's that, too, but it is so much more.
Grace Berube: Yeah, this is such a fantastic resource. Thank you so much for bringing it to our attention. So, like we said, we'll have everything linked in the show notes. We'll also have the article that we mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, and it should have everything covered there for what you need to know to be able to start using this resource in your daily life.
00:22:09
Debra Richardson: Right, yes, in your daily life, be it professional or personal.
Grace Berube: Sure, absolutely.
Debra Richardson: It's as great resource.
Grace Berube: Thank you so much, Debra. As always, super, super insightful, and we'll be sure to use these resources, absolutely.
Thank you so much for listening to the IOFM podcast. Remember to head on over to the Member Forum to discuss today's episode and provide ideas for our next one. And to stay up to date on IOFM's current events, both in-person and virtually, head on over to IOFM.com.
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Receive 1 CEU per hour of listening time towards IOFM programs:
Receive 1 CEU per hour of listening time towards maintaining any AP and P2P related program through IOFM! These programs are designed to establish standards for the profession and recognize accounts payable and procure-to-pay professionals who, by possessing related work experience and passing a comprehensive exam, have met stringent requirements for mastering the financial operations body of knowledge.
Continuing Education Credits available:
Receive 1 CEU per hour of listening time towards IOFM programs:
Receive 1 CEU per hour of listening time towards maintaining any AP and P2P related program through IOFM! These programs are designed to establish standards for the profession and recognize accounts payable and procure-to-pay professionals who, by possessing related work experience and passing a comprehensive exam, have met stringent requirements for mastering the financial operations body of knowledge.
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