About Us

In today’s business environment, business leaders are under attack from many directions. Criminals seek to steal profits in a seemingly never ending variety of ways. Phony invoicing scams are one of the most prevalent methods in use. In a phony invoice scam, a criminal will send any of a variety of invoices for fictitious services from bogus companies like yellow pages listing services, domain name registration services and trademark registration services. The professional level appearance of these invoices occasionally allows them to slip through the cracks in otherwise rigid accounting systems within organizations. Some businesses go for years before ever realizing that the Yellow Page invoices they have been paying are for a bogus entity an not their local directory. In other cases, a single email stating a change in banking information for a trusted vendor sent to a payables clerk may result in criminals collecting thousands of dollars fraudulently.

PhonyInvoices.com, LLC was formed in May of 2011, born from the frustration that Barnett C. Helzberg, Jr. experienced dealing with fraudulent invoice schemes in his years as the leader of a multi-unit retail jeweler, Helzberg Diamonds. By partnering with David Cacioppo, founder of two successful businesses, CHRW Advertising, llc. and emfluence, llc., Helzberg gained the operational edge that he needed to bring PhonyInvoices and his idea, protecting business from invoice scams and putting criminals out of work, to life.