Three Fraud Patterns

Still life on a wooden desk: three paper envelopes lie side by side, one with a slightly different, crooked stamp; a magnifying glass rests over the odd one out.

Three fraud patterns cause most losses for small businesses using crypto. The first is payment redirection. A supplier you already work with appears to send an invoice with new payment details and a fresh wallet address^[1]. The email and invoice look right; the only change is the wallet address, and it belongs to a criminal. The FBI recorded $3 billion in business email compromise losses in 2025^[2], with fake invoices the most common method. The second is platform impersonation. An email that looks like it is from your payment processor or wallet provider claims your account has a problem and asks you to log in or send funds to a holding address. No legitimate platform will ask you to send crypto to fix an account issue. The third is internal impersonation: an urgent request that seems to come from a senior person, asking for a fast crypto payment to a new address. Urgency and authority are the two signals, and both are pressure tactics rather than normal practice^[3].