Consumer Affairs Victoria produced the six one-minute videos to show how scammers operate in bogus government agency scams, overpayment scams, domain name fraud, unauthorised advertising, and computer repairs and office supplies scams.

Small businesses are a big target for scammers, who are using more sophisticated techniques and technology to make people believe the offers and documents they send are genuine.

It can be very difficult to track down scammers once they have taken the money – so one of the best defences for small businesses is learning to spot and avoid them.

A common scam that traps businesses is the unauthorised advertising scam, also known as a false billing scam.

The scammer sends a business an invoice for an advertisement or listing in a publication that the business hasn’t ordered. Busy small businesses often pay the professional-looking invoice without checking its legitimacy. In 2010-11, Consumer Affairs Victoria received almost 300 reports of this kind of scam.

To find out how to protect yourself against this scam and others, watch the Stevie’s Scam School videos at consumer.vic.gov.au/scamschool and share it with other businesses.