I was in a meeting, doing what I always do, getting into the details, asking questions, trying to understand how the business really operates beyond the surface. At some point, I opened an expense account and a charge caught my attention. Not because of the amount. Because of the name.

So at first, I thought maybe it was just something non-essential, one of those charges that has nothing to do with the actual business and we clean it up when we’re reviewing the numbers.

But something about it didn’t feel like that.

So I read it out loud.

The room went quiet. You know that kind of quiet where everyone is trying to process at the same time. Because it didn’t sound like QuickBooks. It didn’t sound like Zoom. It sounded like…something else. Let’s just say, not exactly a line item you want casually sitting in your business bank account.

The owner looks at me, half concerned, half embarrassed, and says, “Wait… what is that? That wasn’t me. That’s not mine.”

Now, Houston! We have a problem!

We did a quick search, and the description only made things worse. It looked exactly like what we were all thinking.

The owner picked up the phone and called the bank. That was an interesting call. A few minutes later, the bank confirmed it was tied to an online mentorship program for women.

Silence.

Then we all burst out laughing. Relief, yes… but only for a second. Because now the real question wasn’t what it sounded like. The real question was, why is it there if nobody signed up for it?

When Curiosity Turns Into Something Else

Nobody on the team recognized it. Nobody was using it, but I went a little deeper. I looked up the program, went through the transactions, and started matching what I was seeing.

Same vendor. Same month. More than one charge that in total represented 5 annual memberships, and all of them had already gone through like nothing, never flagged by the bank or someone else.

At that point, this stopped being a funny story about a weird charge name. This was fraud.

Why This Passed So Easily

Nobody noticed because the numbers didn’t look extravagant. Five hundred dollars, seven hundred dollars, in a business that is growing, that doesn’t immediately raise alarms. It looks like another subscription, another tool, another decision someone probably made at some point.

Add to that multiple people using company cards, expenses happening every day, revenue coming in, and now you have the perfect environment for these type of small transactions pass, this time was an external fraudster but sometime it can be an employee. You know one of those you trust the most. Don’t worry, we will talk more about occupational fraud on our next newsletter.

This Is the Part That Should Make You Pause

Fraud happens. That’s not new.

What should actually make you uncomfortable is how easy it was for this to go unnoticed. Because if no one stops at that first charge, there’s no reason for anyone to question the second, or the third.

And by the time someone finally looks closely, you’re not dealing with one transaction anymore. You’re dealing with months of money leaving your business without anyone catching it.

What We Fixed

Of course, we reported the charges, worked with the bank, and stopped everything immediately. But that’s just damage control.

The real work was fixing the way the business was looking at its money.

We went through recurring charges, identified what was actually being used and what wasn’t, clarified who has the authority to approve expenses, and set a simple habit of reviewing the bank activity with intention.

Nothing fancy. Just paying attention on purpose.

Smart Moves

1. Review your bank activity monthly, line by line Not just a quick glance. Sit with it. Understand what’s actually hitting your account and why.
2. Assign ownership to every company card If multiple people are using cards, each one needs a clear owner. “Everyone uses it” is how things get missed.
3. Question anything you don’t recognize immediately Don’t assume it’s fine because the amount is small or the name sounds familiar enough.
4. Audit recurring charges regularly Subscriptions, memberships, software, anything that auto-renews. These are the easiest places for money to hide.
5. Separate “approved” vs. “unverified” expenses If you can’t clearly explain what a charge is and who approved it, it should be flagged until it is resolved.

Cafecito Takeaway

Fraud is not the part that should worry you the most. What should stay with you is how easy it was for it to sit there, quietly, looking like it belonged, while no one questioned it. Because in a growing business, it’s very easy to focus on what’s coming in and ignore what’s slipping out in small amounts. The risk usually is not in one big transaction, but in the small ones that go unchecked for too long.