The Alabama Cattlemen’s Association Convention featured an educational talk through their General Session focused on “Fighting Fraud on the Farm.” The session featured Amanda Senn, Director of the Alabama Securities Commission, and we spoke with Senn to learn what advice she has for agricultural producers to avoid being scammed.
Senn said, “With the ag industry now so connected to the internet, either it’s Bluetooth or internet-based services with your documents online and your vendor payments transactions occurring online, the one piece of advice I would recommend that everybody needs to slow down and pay attention very closely to all correspondence. Fraudsters or cyber criminals today are sending out fraudulent invoices to computers that one time contained grammatical errors and it was kind of easy to tell if it was a fraudulent correspondence. With artificial intelligence now, fraudsters are able to create polished and sophisticated correspondence and vendor invoices that look identical to the actual invoices. So, I caution everybody to slow down.”
“Before you click, always verify. Verify any request for payment or personal information. I know it is frustrating at times when you’re in a hurry to slow down and pick up the phone and call that vendor directly or call your supplier directly to confirm. But always slow down, verify before clicking or responding to requests for payment or personal information,” said Senn.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.