Sandy man loses $10K in online scam while buying small business

SANDY, Utah (KUTV) — A Sandy man lost $10,000 to a fraudster while trying to purchase a small business.

Daniel Flink was in the process of buying a CPA business online earlier this year.

“It’s going pretty well, it could be better,” Flink said.

Flink, a first-time small business owner, was searching for a remote CPA business and said all the transactions were supposed to be secure wire transfers.

The selling price for the business was $270,000, and Flink was preparing to wire a $10,000 deposit when he received an email with wiring instructions.

“I got an email from supposedly the business broker that was handling the transaction,” Flink said. “If I would have looked carefully, I would have known it wasn’t.”

Flink didn’t notice at the time that two letters in the email address were transposed, and the email was actually from a fraudster.

The wiring instructions were for an account controlled by the scammer, and three days passed without the seller receiving the money.

“I got a pit feeling in the pit of my stomach of, ‘What have I done?’” Flink said.

He believes a fraudster somehow learned about the wiring instructions exchange between him and the legitimate broker.

“Basically, I’m out 10 grand,” he said.

Flink admitted the mistake was his fault, but he thinks there should be better safeguards in place.

“When I sent the money the second time, I physically called the broker and said, ‘Okay, I want to hear from your mouth the routing number and account number to send this to,’” Flink said.

Despite the setback, Flink eventually acquired the business and now runs it from his home, but he says the mistake almost cost him everything.

“Verify, verify, verify, and then verify again,” Flink advised.

Flink doesn’t believe he’ll ever recover the $10,000 and suspects the fraudster may be operating from outside the country.

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