Cybercrime threatens to take down small businesses

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Small business owner, Michell Marsico, arrived at her company Village View Escrow and received an unusual complaint.

"I walked in and the girls said, 'We have a problem. Someone on the phone is complaining to us to stop harrassing him,'" recounted Marsico.

The caller told her that he was going to "send the money off." Confused by the statement and wanting to ensure everything was alright, she quickly logged into the company financial accounts. Her heart sank.

"We noticed that there were 26 wires that went out of our trust account without our knowledge," she said.

In other words, someone had pulled hudreds of thousands of dollars from the company account. Marsico immediately called her bank.

"The bank said that they didn't have any responsibility for those wires and that I was basically on my own."

At that moment it all set in. Marsico would may never recover the 465 thousand dollars that someone had pulled from her company's account. 

"I went numb. I went numb when I realized that it was really lost. I can't really remember those first three days because I was completely in shock," added Marsico.

She spent days trying to track down her companies money, but was only able to locate 78 thousand of the almost half a million that had been taken from her. She never saw the rest of money again.

Marsico is like thousands of other small businesses who have been targeted by cyber criminals.

At a forum in downtown Los Angeles, security experts discussed ways businesses can prevent attacks like the one that happen to Marsico from occurring. 

They suggested using a complicated password and changing it frequently; dedicating a computer to be used only for financial transactions to prevent hacking through social media and other web activity; and having employees sign an agreement that prevents them from downloading data on their personal computers in order to hold them liable. 

According to LAPD Computer Crimes Detective Andy Kleinick, best way to keep a company safe is to educate business owners.

"The number one way to prevent this is for users to know how to use their computer. Knowing what to do, what not to do, and how to secure it would stop more than half of all the hackings we deal with," said Kleinick.

Marisco learned her lesson the hard way and has implimented a great deal of security within her company to stop any future attacks. Her company was able to recover, which makes her one of the lucky few to be back to business as usual.