Procedure beats software.
Voice clones, fake video calls, and forged invoices are how small companies lose money now. The FBI counted 22,364 complaints referencing AI in 2025 with $893 million in losses. The defense is procedure, not software.
Payment verification procedure
- Any change to payment details, and any urgent payment request, is verified by calling a number you already had on file, never a number in the message.
- Payments above a threshold you set require two people to approve, in two channels.
- Executives and finance staff agree a spoken codeword for urgent requests; a request without it waits.
- Treat urgency itself as a warning sign. Legitimate partners can wait an hour.
- Record every verification: who called whom, when, what was confirmed.
- Report attempted fraud to the FBI's IC3 and your bank the same day; speed matters for recovery.
If you already paid
Call your bank now to attempt a recall, then report to the FBI's IC3 the same day. See the Incident Desk.
Incident Desk